French university and high school blockades ahead of nationwide strike, Digi Mart USA News: Saying they are determined to “hold firm” against government announcements they consider insufficient, several French universities will remain closed on Tuesday and some high schools are blocked, ahead of a national interprofessional mobilization on Thursday that youth organizations want to join.
The Dauphine-PSL university in Paris will stay closed through Thursday, its president, Bruno Bouchard, told RTL on Tuesday. He said the university hopes to reopen under good conditions on Friday, stressing that “educational continuity” remains its priority.
The Sorbonne Nouvelle university, closed since Monday, also announced that its Nation campus will be shut all day.
“We must keep showing, especially at Matignon, that the universities are still mobilized, that this will not stop easily, and that they now need to respond with something concrete,” Suzanne Nijdam, president of the Fage, the country’s largest student organization, told AFP.
Student organizations have issued a national call to blockade. On Monday, after the All Saints’ holiday break and without a formal call to action, about 15% of higher education institutions again experienced “disruptions,” according to the government.
At the high school level, mobilization resumed with the return of burned trash bins and blockades in front of schools.
In Rennes, tensions rose as early as 7:30 a.m. between an administrator and about thirty students who, as the day before, tried to block the Bréquigny high school, the largest in Brittany.
“This is the first time it has been this tense,” said Paul, a 17-year-old senior, who thanked the teachers supporting the students. At 8:00 a.m., after a brief police presence, students blocked the entrance, AFP observed.
“It would be hard to be against them,” said Raphaël Gironimi, a mathematics teacher and member of the SNES-FSU union, who waited outside the Toulouse-Lautrec high school in Toulouse with students. “Here, there are 35 students per class almost everywhere, and a building adapted neither to extreme heat nor to extreme cold,” he explained.
More unusually, the Louis Le Grand high school in central Paris was blocked by dumpsters placed in front of its entrance, according to media reports.
At the Balzac high school, administrators let students in through a side door, and police were present this morning, a parents’ association reported.
After more than a month of blockades, the government announced a series of measures last week to try to calm young people’s anger. Among them is the gradual replacement of Parcoursup, the university admissions platform at the center of many grievances, by 2028.
The ministers of Education and Higher Education also promised to cancel planned job cuts in the national education system, create 500 additional positions, cap second-year high school classes at 28 students, and add 15,000 places in higher education.
According to Matignon, the Prime Minister asked the Education minister to ensure a response is provided to the 200 high schools facing the greatest difficulties listed on the consultation platform. Youth organizations called this a “first step” that is insufficient.
Other measures, such as the continuous assessment overhaul, “require substantial work by the end of December,” the Education minister argued on Monday.
The intersyndical group of the USL, Unef, Fage and Union étudiante, which still demands the outright repeal of Parcoursup, plans to join Thursday’s day of mobilization for purchasing power, which for the first time since the start of the school year is expected to bring together private-sector employees, civil servants and retirees.
The Paris route for this demonstration, also backed by the yellow vests movement, has not yet been approved by authorities, to the displeasure of the CGT union, which said Monday it needs routes in advance to secure them, particularly with the Paris city hall.
Since the riots and looting of October 17, the Paris police prefecture has refused to allow demonstrators to march through the heart of the capital on the last two Saturdays, authorizing only alternative routes on the city’s outskirts.
The Interfac Île-de-France collective, which wanted to march Tuesday between the Panthéon and the headquarters of the Medef employers’ federation, was vetoed by the prefecture and offered a route on the periphery, which it intends to challenge in court. Authorities expect between 15,000 and 30,000 demonstrators in the capital on Tuesday.
