At a demonstration in Paris’s 13th arrondissement on 10 October, high school students sang the national anthem and chanted "Macron démission." Their placards read "Nous avons besoin de plus de professeurs," "We need more teachers." Some urged others to stay calm and not to run, warning that this was what the CRS, France’s riot police, wanted. Before long, officers moved in to disperse the crowd.
For three students aged 16 to 18 from the 13th and 19th arrondissements, interviewed that day, the problems are concrete: overcrowded classrooms, no computer room, a shortage of teachers in their final year, and a canteen so packed that they have about 10 minutes to eat.
Meals must be booked in advance, and many end up buying food elsewhere. One week, they said, food had cost them €170. All three asked not to be named because of tensions around the protests.
When they sat their exams, the students said, they were sent to other sites, in rooms so stifling that some left for the toilets just to breathe. They took their concerns to a meeting at another high school with school leaders and officials, but the answers were disappointing.
Some issues were passed on to other authorities, including the education authority and Valérie Pécresse’s regional council, and the agreed changes won't take effect until next year. The students want them now.
On 6 October, as demonstrations spread across France, US President Donald Trump offered a different explanation.
"This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!" he wrote on Truth Social.
The students reject that. The protests have nothing to do with religion or immigration, they said. High school students come from every background, and there should be no shortcuts. None of them wanted their origins or religion mentioned. They wanted, they said, to be judged on what they were saying.
The movement began in September in disadvantaged suburbs of Paris and has since spread across the country.
More than 250,000 people took part in protests nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry, while organisers put the figure at 450,000.
'They tend to infantilise us'
A 23-year-old Arab medical student of North African heritage from Seine-Saint-Denis, the department north of Paris where the movement has deep roots, described classrooms not built for more than 30 pupils, broken furniture, and rooms that are hard to bear in winter. He asked to remain anonymous because of upcoming exams.
"Instead of trying to understand our difficulties and find solutions, they tend to infantilise us," he said. "We are capable of identifying the problems in our schools and saying what needs to change."
He is used to Trump’s provocations, he said, and pays them little attention. "What he said has, as usual, nothing to do with reality," he said, adding that he saw it as political point-scoring ahead of the US midterm elections.
What worries him more is that young people from immigrant families have their grievances read through assumptions about their identity, rather than their experience. "Our demands risk being reduced to questions of origin or religion," he said.
Many young people, he said, refuse to speak to channels such as CNews and BFMTV, which they see as portraying people from immigrant backgrounds in racist and Islamophobic terms.
"We want the media to talk about why we are mobilising, rather than turning our demands into a debate about our identity," the young student added.
A 21-year-old woman who went to school in Seine-Saint-Denis before moving to a Paris high school, and who also asked not to be named, said the protesters’ demands were legitimate.
She was stunned, she said, that students asking for better conditions had been met with violence. As for Trump, she said, "he should keep quiet."
The crackdown has been heavy. More than 1,800 people are being prosecuted over alleged offences linked to the unrest, including 1,483 minors, according to the Justice Ministry.
Inequality built into the system
The staffing crisis is national. According to the Education Ministry’s statistics directorate, DEPP, 9.8 percent of teaching hours in public secondary schools went undelivered in 2024–2025: 7.5 percent because absent teachers were not replaced, and 2.3 percent because schools were closed.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, two-thirds of schools had unfilled teaching positions, according to a union survey cited by Reuters.
Louise Paternoster, a representative of the CGT education union in the department, told Reuters the area did not receive resources to match its needs.
"In a period of budgetary restraint, it is more difficult to reduce inequalities," said Clémence Cardon-Quint, a professor at Paul-Valéry University Montpellier who studies education funding.
The problems start long before high school. A primary school teacher in her fifties, who asked not to be named, said her biggest challenge was supporting pupils with autism, ADHD and dyslexia.
"Inclusion is a very good thing, but we need the resources to welcome these children properly," she said.
Teachers sometimes have to make or buy materials themselves, which multiplies preparation time, and other children get less attention.
"Unfortunately, the die is very often cast as early as the first year of primary school," she said. A child who struggles to read needs help from speech therapists or psychologists, or support through France’s disability service, the MDPH, and that depends on families pushing for it. Some children, she said, reach secondary school without the level they need.
A concession, not a solution
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu acknowledged that young people’s anger did not come out of nowhere, while condemning violence and accusing outside groups of exploiting the protests. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot rejected Trump’s reading, saying France should tell its own story.
On 8 October, Education Minister Édouard Geffray announced that around 3,000 qualified teachers who had not yet started work would be sent to schools facing staffing shortages.
It was a stopgap, not 3,000 new permanent posts. Student unions welcomed it as a first victory but vowed to keep mobilising.
Student unions have called a new national day of protest for 17 October. Asked about Trump’s claim that the protests were about Islam, the primary school teacher did not hesitate.
"It’s completely absurd and has absolutely nothing to do with it."
Lyna Ouandjeli is a researcher and consultant specialising in geopolitics, conflict analysis, migration, governance and international law, with a particular focus on Iraq and the wider Middle East and North Africa. She has conducted research and led policy dialogues in France and Iraq
This article was published in collaboration with Egab