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.

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.

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”.

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. The tally did not include the shooting in Aubagne near Marseille, which police were treating as a separate crime.

President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters at the Paris Motor Show, said the pupils’ grievances would take time to address and urged restraint from protesters.

“These are issues that deserve time, consultations, discussion, and respect,” Mr. Macron said, urging calm.

Tuesday demonstration

Mr. Macron’s appeal went out ahead of nationwide demonstrations on Tuesday being promoted online by the far-left France Unbowed party fiercely opposed to Macron. They were to be followed on Saturday (October 10, 2026) by wider public demonstrations against the rising cost of living.

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.

He added that the protesters — many of whom were minors — were “disturbed by the level of repression never before seen for a student movement”.

One young protester lost a hand from a police stun grenade earlier in the protests, another lost many of his teeth from a teargas canister fired in his face at close range, and another lost an eye.

Rights groups and students have accused the police of a disproportionate use of force.

Several police officers and teachers have also been hurt, and on Monday (October 12, 2026) authorities said fireworks fired through a tube injured two school workers in Reims, one school worker in a Paris suburb and a police officer outside a school in Marseille.

The police have opened internal investigations into 24 allegations of brutality against demonstrators since the protest movement began last month.

More than 6,800 people — largely minors — have been taken into police custody, the justice ministry says.

Extra teachers

The protesting students have been blocking access to schools by piling dumpsters, bins and barriers at entrances, to complain about absent teachers, overloaded timetables, overcrowded classes and dilapidated classrooms, among other grievances.

Pupils on Monday (October 12, 2026) blocked the entrances of schools in Paris, the southern cities of Marseille and Toulouse and the western city of Rennes, AFP reporters saw.

The government last week promised some 3,000 substitute teachers would be deployed in the coming days to replace absent staff at the 114 worst-affected high schools.

A government spokeswoman on Monday said they had started to be assigned.

The national students’ union has dismissed the government’s move as “crumbs” and is demanding a 10-billion-euro ($11-billion) boost for lycees.

However, some parents and students voiced concerns about all the classes being missed, with a few worrying the children were being used as pawns by opposition political parties.

Some parents pleaded for the teens to lift their blockades at Paris schools.

“The blockades are by their very nature undemocratic,” complained one mother, who went by the pseudonym Gladys.

“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.

Published – October 12, 2026 10:25 pm IST

French Republican Security Corps (CRS – Compagnies Republicaines de Securite) police officers clash with protesters on October 8, 2026
| Photo Credit: AFP

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.

In Marseille, Nantes and Lyon, the street protests began peacefully mid-morning, with the ⁠largest demonstration expected in Paris in the afternoon.

Youngsters held aloft smoke flares and placards reading “Under our school books, anger” and “Where are the politicians? Do they even know we exist?”

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.

A teenager’s hand was blown off as high-school protesters clashed with ‌riot police in northern France on Monday. François-Xavier Lauch, prefect of Pas-de-Calais, declined to comment on the ‌exact ⁠circumstances, saying some 200 to 250 protesters had been hurling objects at police.

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. Some local education authorities have ​tried to move classes online. The education ministry ‌did not immediately make numbers available.

“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. “There is such a gap between the elites and us.”

Prime Minister Lecornu promises response

Prime Minister ‌Sebastien Lecornu has ordered his ministers to tackle the students’ leading demands. Those include ensuring absent ​teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. school day and the need for longer lunch breaks.

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.

But finding spare cash will be difficult.

The protests have piled pressure on a government trying to narrow a ‌ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France’s growing debt pile, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push bond yields higher. The yield on France’s 10-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5% last week.

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. Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right euro-skeptic populist ‌leading the presidential race ahead of next spring’s election, set out plans to slash public spending if elected, seeking to establish her ​fiscal credibility as the bond market crisis deepens.

Thousands of arrests

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.

At least 715 police ⁠officers and 215 teenagers have been injured in clashes, according to Lecornu’s office.

Six months before an election to replace Macron, his government and Le Pen’s National Rally party have accused hard-left France ‌Unbowed (LFI) lawmakers and mayors of stoking the protests. The LFI denies the accusation.

Bally Bagayoko, the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis, a poor Paris suburb, said he opposed violence but stood beside the protesting students.

“I stand ​by being on the side of my residents, and high school students are my residents,” he said.

Published – October 06, 2026 04:53 pm IST

A 15-year-old lost a hand on Monday (October 5, 2026) in the latest round of French high school protests that have erupted into clashes with police, with more than 200 students injured in the violence.

France has been shaken by a wave of demonstrations by teenage students at high schools, or lycees, since late September demanding better classroom conditions.

More than 500 of France’s 3,700 lycees were fully or partially closed on Monday (October 5, 2026), and bigger demonstrations dubbed “Act III” by a secondary school students’ union are expected on Tuesday as social media calls mount for a “black week” of protests.

The 15-year-old lost his hand in the northern town of Lens when he picked up a sting-ball grenade fired by riot police and it exploded, according to a police union source.

The teenager, hospitalised in Lille, is “out of danger”, said Francois-Xavier Lauch, the prefect for the northern Pas-de-Calais region.

Another protester, aged 16, who suffered serious head injuries at a protest in the central city of Tours last week has lost the use of one eye, prosecutors said.

The government says 215 students and 715 police officers have been injured since the protest movement began, while 10 investigations have been opened by the police watchdog.

The protests have seen students block the entrances to hundreds of schools around the country, complaining of teacher absences, overloaded timetables, dilapidated classrooms and buildings ill-adapted to rising temperatures, among other grievances.

“It’s clear the education system isn’t working,” Alma, a pupil at the Lycee Charlemagne in central Paris, told AFP.

The unrest ignited just months before the 2027 election that will determine the successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron.

The government has sought to address the grievances, while accusing hard-left activists of having hijacked the protest movement.

“They think that just because they’re letting us express ourselves on a platform, on the internet, we’ll stop blocking access and being angry, but this anger has been here for years,” said Simon, a pupil also at the Lycee Charlemagne.

The French Human Rights League (LDH) on Monday accused security forces of using disproportionate methods against protesters, many of whom are legally minors.

24 schools damaged

In central Paris, dozens of teenage students demonstrated outside a school while passing cars honked their horns. Some classmates made their way inside to attend lessons.

Some protesters outside the Gustave Eiffel high school set off fireworks in the direction of police, who responded with tear gas, but overall the situation remained calm, AFP reporters said.

The movement started on September 17 at a high school in the Paris suburb of Creteil, in support of teachers striking over a lack of staff and resources.

It gained momentum and spread across France, at times spiralling into vandalism, including the destruction of bus shelters, the burning of school entrances and clashes between protesters and security forces.

Since the start of the movement, 24 schools have been burned or ransacked, according to the education minister.

More than 5,000 people, 87 percent of them minors, have been arrested.

‘Parental responsibility’

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu on Sunday (October 4, 2026) urged local authorities to prioritise filling gaps left by long-term teacher absences and unfilled posts.

He called a meeting for Tuesday (October 6, 2026) with regional presidents to discuss overhauling the country’s often-dilapidated school buildings.

The government is also pushing legislation to make those responsible for damaging public property pay for repairs themselves, instead of drawing on public funds.

Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon defended the bill.

“When you have 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds who, at 9 am, are burning bus shelters or — perhaps even more seriously — the high school where they study, that raises the question of parental responsibility,” she told the Europe1/CNews broadcaster.

Published – October 06, 2026 05:32 am IST