France closes 400 schools as student unrest over conditions continues
France has closed hundreds of secondary schools amid violent student protests, as ministers urged parents to keep children away from blockades and warned families could be billed for damage.
Issued on: 02/10/2026 - RFI
Around 400 of France’s 3,700 secondary schools were closed on Friday on the orders of police prefects, with many schools switching to online lessons.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray urged parents to intervene, warning that young people were putting themselves at risk.
“Children are in danger on the streets,” he told BFMTV. “Parents must, quite clearly, take action and tell their children not to go [to the blockades]."
The protests began over staffing, funding and school conditions and have spread rapidly across the country.
The Interior Ministry said 1,027 secondary schools were affected on Thursday, including 222 that were blockaded. Around 30 university campuses were also blocked.
It said 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday alone, mainly in connection with violence, unlawful gatherings and attacks on people in positions of authority.
A total of 305 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were injured during Thursday’s unrest, while Geffray said 170 pupils and 65 education staff had been hurt since the movement began.
More than 100 secondary schools had also suffered serious damage, he said.
Parents made to pay
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he had asked prosecutors to seek civil liability against parents whose children were responsible for vandalism, potentially leaving families to pay for repairs.
“When schools are vandalised, when bus shelters are attacked, when public transport is targeted, we will now hold parents civilly liable,” he told radio network RTL.
“It’s not the minor who pays, it’s the parents,” Darmanin said, arguing that the approach could prove “far more useful than detention”.
He said around 90 percent of those detained were minors, while roughly a third of those arrested had been held in connection with violence against other people.
Darmanin described those responsible as an “active and violent minority” and questioned whether all of them were secondary school students.
He said the unrest had moved beyond a conventional student protest to become a matter of “public order”, with the authorities concerned about further violence over the weekend and during a national day of action scheduled for Tuesday.
First concession
The government has accused the hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI) of contributing to the radicalisation of the movement and seeking to exploit the unrest.
The prime minister’s office has described the protests as a “manoeuvre organised by LFI and its proxies on the far left”.
LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard rejected the accusation and urged the government “not to descend into conspiracy theories”.
The government’s claims that LFI has orchestrated the unrest have not been independently established.
At the same time, the government has made its first concrete concession to the movement.
On Thursday night, Geffray announced that a proposal in the 2027 budget to introduce registration fees for non-scholarship students in BTS vocational higher education courses and those in preparatory classes for entrance exams for France's elite universities would be dropped.
The planned charges – €178 for BTS students and €270 for those in preparatory classes – had drawn criticism from student groups, trade unions and parties on the left.
Geffray was due to meet secondary school organisations, parents’ associations, education unions and representatives of the national student council on Friday.
“One of the difficulties with this movement is that there is no single national demand,” he said. “It all stemmed from a fairly diverse range of local demands.”
Student organisations are nevertheless calling for protests to continue, with the movement now looking towards Tuesday’s national day of action.
Hundreds of high schools in France cose as new protests against conditions erupt
The students say their school hours are excessively long, conditions inadequate including overheated classrooms, and that there are too many staff absences.
French high school students lit fires outside schools and faced off with police on Friday as a protest movement that has forced the closure of some 400 establishments showed no sign of abating.
The movement, which began last week in the Paris region and rapidly spread nationwide, has seen teenage pupils at lycées in their final years of schooling block access to buildings and clash with police.
The Ministry of Education said earlier on Friday that 564 schools had "been the subject of actions or disruptions since the start of the day."
The students say their school hours are excessively long, conditions inadequate including overheated classrooms, and that there are too many staff absences
The government says the grievances are legitimate but has condemned what it has described as "urban violence."
Students have accused police of using excessive force and causing injuries by regularly firing tear gas canisters to disperse the protests.
In Paris on Friday, fire damaged the entrances of two high schools, Leonard de Vinci in the south of the city and Gaston-Bachelard in the southeast, with the fire brigade called to extinguish the blazes, an AFP photographer said.
'Held hostage'
Education Minister Edouard Geffray said "the high school student movement is being held hostage by ultra-violent fringe groups," adding that nearly 400 high schools out of the 3,700 in the country were expected to be closed on Friday.
Many high schools have also planned to conduct classes remotely, particularly in the southern city of Marseille.
At least 65 staff members have been injured, including 40 high school principals, since the start of the movement, Geffray told BFMTV.
Some 170 students have been wounded while over 100 high schools have suffered "severe damage."
"Parents must clearly step up and tell their children not to go" to the protests, he added. "What matters now is ensuring our children are no longer out on the streets, because they are in danger."
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he has asked prosecutors to hold parents liable for damage caused by their children during the protests and "pay for repairs."
Since the start of the movement, around 2,000 people have been taken into police custody," 90% of whom were minors," Darmanin told RTL.
'We've won'
In the western city of Rennes, the tension was already palpable outside the Jean-Mace high school with students dressed in black and wearing balaclavas standing not far from a heavy police presence.
"As far as we're concerned, we've won, our school is closed this morning," said Lola, 16, who declined to give her last name.
She condemned what she said was police violence. "It makes us even angrier, the police have no right to hit us or use tear gas on us."
Police used tear gas at the Kerichen high school in Brest, in western France, an AFP photographer said.
The protests have also made a strong political echo just over half a year before presidential elections, with the government accusing the hard left France Unbowed (LFI), whose firebrand leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is again standing for the presidency, of being behind the movement.
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