Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
France answers pupils' funding blockades with school closures and an online portal
Some 86,000 people marched outside Paris on Tuesday by the Interior Ministry's estimate, backing pupils blockading high schools over education funding. With Macron barred from a third term, school funding has become an early test for the presidential campaign.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- Protests that began at one Paris-region high school in mid-September have grown into a nationwide movement, with crowds in Marseille, Strasbourg and other cities.
- More than two weeks of class boycotts and blockades have brought more than 6,100 arrests, most of them of minors.
- A 15-year-old boy lost a hand on Monday in an incident involving a police stun grenade.
- Accused of ignoring protesters, the Education Ministry opened an online portal where high schoolers can anonymously describe their problems and the changes they want.
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Why it matters
- constraint Every school shut to calm the protests also stops the teaching pupils say is underfunded, so closures that run for weeks add to the grievance they are meant to contain.
- exposure Force used against teenagers is pulling parents and teachers toward the protesters, so ministers now face political risk over policing tactics on top of school budgets.
- decision Presidential candidates now have to say where they stand on school funding, and France Unbowed's candidate already has by strongly backing the protests.
The government's responses so far fall into two kinds: control and consultation. Last week authorities started closing schools to calm the demonstrations; schools had been widely damaged, and staff, students and police were being injured in growing numbers [15]. The Education Ministry's student portal is the consultation [14]. Neither commits money. The report does not mention a funding offer from the government, or a figure for what pupils are asking.
The closures carry their own trade-off. They protect buildings and staff from the damage and injuries that prompted them [15], and they also stop teaching. Classes were fully or partly suspended at 891 schools on Tuesday, according to the Education Ministry [16]. The pupils' grievances often centre on a lack of resources and opportunities for students in disadvantaged schools [17].
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez makes the government's strongest case. He said the protests at times turned into rioting that required police intervention, and that 715 officers have been injured [18]. The police response, he said, has been proportionate in "almost all cases" [19]. Opponents describe the same streets differently. "Riot police, batons, rubber bullets, tear gas," said Aurélien Le Coq, a lawmaker with the far-left France Unbowed party [1]. The violence is "absolutely unbearable," Le Coq said [2]. Felix Barney, a university student, said it doesn't make "any sense to hit minors" [3].
Adults are now physically present at the barricades. At the Hélène Boucher lycée in Paris' 20th district, parents and other adults placed themselves between protesters and police on Tuesday [5]. "They are our children. Teachers, parents, federations, we all share the same goal: the protection of children's rights, and it is a legitimate right to demonstrate and to make demands," said Emilia Sichili Suriam, a member of a parents' association [6]. In Lille, demonstrator Léa Monimart said: "It's important to show that there are adults who support them" [7].
The pupils have also tapped a wider discontent over fuel prices that soared because of the Iran war, constraints on public spending, rising poverty and wealth inequality under Macron [20]. Macron cannot run for a third consecutive term [21]. The blockades and arrests have become a flashpoint in the early days of the presidential campaign [12]. In my view, control and consultation suit a government that is leaving office. The consequence falls on the next one: it inherits the funding demand and whatever the portal has recorded.
What to watch
- Whether the government ties any funding commitment to what the Education Ministry's portal collects from students.
- Whether the number of schools with suspended classes falls from Tuesday's 891, as a test of whether closures are cooling the blockades.
- Whether other presidential candidates join France Unbowed's in backing the pupils or set out their own school funding positions.