French students and teachers protest education cuts, conditions and inequality. Photo Credit: LPLT / Wikimedia Commons
Around 200 schools were closed in France as students and teachers staged yet another round of nationwide protests on Tuesday, October 13. It is the latest demonstration in a string of increasingly tense and violent protests in the country, as teachers’ unions have joined the calls for increased funding for education and better conditions for the students.
Why students and teachers are taking to the streets in France
The protests stem from teachers’ and students’ concerns about overcrowded classrooms, staff shortages and poorly maintained school buildings, as well as insufficient pay and working conditions. The protesters are demanding increased spending on education and opposing the Parcoursup platform, France’s official national web portal and centralised admissions platform for first-year higher education programmes.
Students allege controversial Parcoursup is an elitist system
Complaints about the Parcoursup platform include that it lacks transparency because it uses private algorithms to ‘sort’ students; reinforces social inequality by tailoring a student’s results based on the quality of the school they went to, not their grades; and introduces strict merit-based filtering and selection criteria, turning the public school system, in the eyes of the protesters, into an elitist hierarchical system.
Thousands detained as police brutality investigations continue
The marches began in Lyon and Nantes, with students also blockading educational centres in Paris, Rennes, and Strasbourg. According to local French sources, this is the fifth round of mobilisation. However, the 200 closed schools represents a lower figure than in the previous week, according to Education Minister Edouard Geffray.
According to the minister, a consultation platform for high school students had received 86,000 contributions and nearly 1,000 contract teachers were being recruited to strengthen replacement capacity.
Nearly 7,000 people, most of whom are underage, have been detained during the monthlong string of demonstrations. Additionally, France’s national police inspector, IGPN, has opened two dozen investigations into suspected police brutality.
Protests turn violent as students suffer serious injuries
The protests have been particularly active in Paris, where students and teachers gathered near the Hélène-Boucher high school and protesters partially blocked the Turgot and Montaigne high schools. The Paris-Panthéon-Assas University was also forced to carry out virtual classes after the Assas and Vaugirard campuses were both blockaded.
A local police force confirmed a major skirmish between two groups of people outside Assas earlier in the morning, wherein students reported that at least one of their classmates had been injured.
Earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy lost his hand when a grenade detonated during one of the protests, which involved hundreds of participants.