French high school and university student protests despite Paris demonstration ban, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): Several thousand students and high school pupils gathered Tuesday in central Paris in defiance of a ban on demonstrations, while several universities and high schools reported blockades. One doctoral student, Nao, 23, who works at Jussieu, said participants knew they were not permitted to march but insisted the movement was not fading.
The Paris police prefecture reported two unauthorized processions, which were located and immediately surrounded by officers. The young protesters were held for an hour before heading in the afternoon toward the Sorbonne, where the demonstration had originally been due to start, and dispersed calmly around 4 p.m.
The route requested by Interfac IDF, which describes itself as the general assembly of students from Paris-region universities, was to run from the Panthéon to the headquarters of the Medef employers’ federation. The prefecture vetoed that route and authorized only a march on the city’s outskirts.
Authorities had expected between 10,000 and 20,000 protesters.
Youth organizations, still dissatisfied with announcements made by the government, called Tuesday for blockades of universities and high schools ahead of the national interprofessional mobilization on Thursday, November 5, in which they intend to take part. According to the Ministry of Education, 48 of France’s roughly 3,700 high schools were blocked Tuesday.
The Union syndicale lycéenne (USL) disputed those figures, saying it had counted ten times as many, or 500.
Education Minister Édouard Geffray repeated on X that preventing students from entering their schools deprives them of a fundamental right to education. He said that in some of these schools, education staff had again been victims of violence, and that the government refers such cases to the courts each time a member of the school system is attacked while performing their duties.
Police were heavily deployed in front of schools across France. In Rennes, officers dispersed several hundred high school students, accompanied by union members and teachers, who marched calmly through the city center despite the ban.
Several dozen students were checked after being kettled, without any serious incident reported.
Students and teachers described a range of grievances. One Rennes-area pupil said teacher shortages had already caused months without a math teacher.
A Toulouse math teacher and SNES-FSU member, Raphaël Geromini, said classes in his school averaged 35 students and that the building was poorly adapted to extreme heat and cold.
In Lille, police were stationed outside some high schools Tuesday morning, and the prefecture deployed a security system outside about ten schools in the metropolitan area to ensure students could attend class. In the Bas-Rhin department, the prefect banned for the entire week any gathering constituting a protest on public roads within 50 meters of 11 high schools in the Strasbourg Eurometropolis.
On university campuses, several sites including Moulins and Pont-de-Bois, two of the main campuses of the University of Lille, were closed for the day following blockades, the university announced. A 19-year-old student at the Moulins campus, André-Baptiste, said the blockade was the work of a minority, adding that many more students were there simply to attend class.
After more than a month of blockades, the government announced a series of measures last week to calm student anger. They include the gradual replacement of the Parcoursup university admissions platform by 2028, the creation of 500 additional positions, a cap of 28 students per class in seconde, and 15,000 additional places in higher education.
On Monday, 15% of higher education institutions were disrupted, according to Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste. Some, including Paris-Dauphine PSL, plan to remain closed through Thursday inclusive.
The intersyndicale grouping the USL, Unef, La Fage and the Union étudiante continues to demand the repeal of the post-baccalaureate orientation platform and €10 billion in investment.
