France's High School Blockades Spread to 300 Schools
French police clashed with high school students on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, as lycée blockades that began in Paris last week spread across France. A lycée is a high school in France.
By midday Tuesday, the education ministry reported protests at 300 high schools, with 40 further arrests and 10 students and staff injured. The Guardian
That count followed a tense Monday, September 28, when authorities reported 164 arrests. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said protests had broken out at 180 schools that day, with 12 officers, 12 students and three school staff injured.
In Lille on September 29, pupils set fire to dustbins and threw bottles and paving stones at police, who responded with teargas. Confrontations between students and police also occurred in Bordeaux, Rennes, Nantes and Marseille.
The students are protesting class sizes, teacher shortages and long timetables. Ryad Rani, president of the Union Syndicale Lycéene — a high school student union — called for a total blockade of high schools, citing overcrowded classrooms of 32-35 students and shortages of teachers and staff.
At the Lamartine school in Paris, around 80 students gathered outside with slogans including "more hours of lessons than sleep". Euronews On Tuesday morning, the Paris rectorat — the office that oversees Paris schools — reported fewer than ten of Paris's 90 lycées faced blockade attempts.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said escalating the school demonstrations would be irresponsible.
The student action coincided with a separate national mobilization. French unions went on strike on September 29 over government budget plans including €54m in public spending cuts. An estimated 40% of primary school teachers stopped work on Tuesday.
The broader context here is convergence. Classroom conditions and national fiscal policy, meaning government decisions on spending and cuts, landed on the same day. Schools became both the subject of protest and the site of action, with lycéens blockading gates while primary teachers withdrew labor.
Looking at what this means for the government, the immediate pressure is operational. A protest count that moves from 180 schools to 300 schools in a day, alongside arrests and injuries to officers, students and staff, raises the cost of policing each blockade. Officials must address detailed demands over staffing and hours while also defending a budget plan contested in the streets.
In my view, the question to watch is duration. A one-day overlap between student blockades and union strike action creates disruption. A sustained lycée movement, organized around calls for total blockade, would test whether education authorities can contain incidents city by city without further escalation.
