Student protests gripping France for three weeks rumbled on Monday (October 12, 2026), though authorities hoped they were starting to ease ahead of half-term holidays — even as the country braced for fresh nationwide demonstrations.
The tally did not include the shooting in Aubagne near Marseille, which police were treating as a separate crime. In an incident seemingly unrelated to the protests, police arrested a 14-year-old on Monday (October 12, 2026) near Marseille after a middle school headmaster and a teacher were shot with a hunting rifle, wounding both. Students have blocked entrances to hundreds of lycees — high schools for children 15 to 18 — since late September to rail against poor classroom conditions, with squads of riot police deployed and occasionally violent clashes erupting. The Ministry said eight members of teaching staff were injured early Monday (October 12, 2026), mostly in the Paris region and cities of Bordeaux and Lyon.
On Monday (October 12, 2026), some 130 of France’s 3,700 lycees remained closed, according to the education ministry, which said that although “the number of school closures is falling… the violence is intensifying”. Naila, a 17-year-old student in the city of Rennes, said she would participate in Tuesday’s demonstration and hoped it would “converge” with the wider one on Saturday (October 10, 2026). “Students aren’t being heard enough… not their proposals to authorities and elected officials,” a 19-year-old graphic design student in Paris, Leo, said. “It’s shameful to block students who really want to study, by a movement they aren’t part of,” said Clara Juillet, a university student in Tours who has been unable to attend lessons because of the protests.
