Students, teachers and parents marched in cites across France on Tuesday (October 6, 2026) and protesters blockaded hundreds of schools, in the biggest day of action in a wave of demonstrations demanding the government tackle understaffed and dilapidated classrooms.
Tuesday’s demonstrations come after a fortnight of protests which began in Paris’s deprived suburbs before spreading across the country. The government responded with riot police, saying the movement had now morphed into urban violence. Some local education authorities have tried to move classes online. The education ministry did not immediately make numbers available. “There is such a gap between the elites and us. The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policy makers.
The regional newspaper La Voix du Nord said the 15-year-old lost his hand and part of his lower arm after picking up a police dispersal grenade. The High School Students Union said 1,800 high schools were blockaded or would close for the day. France’s interior ministry said 6,100 people have been arrested since the protests began, the overwhelming majority of them minors. More than 1,800 people are being prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, the justice ministry said, without specifying the crimes.
“When the answer is violence, it means democracy is no longer working,” said Hugo Vetzel, a high school leaver in Strasbourg now taking classes for the entrance exams to France’s top-tier universities. The government would also look at repairs needed to ageing school buildings, said Lecornu, who demanded ministers send in their first proposals by the end of October. Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.
