France's Student Protests: Real Grievances Meet Political Tradition

Since late September, high school students across France have been blocking school entrances and marching through cities by the hundreds of thousands, demanding relief from what they describe as a collapsing education system. The blockades have turned violent in pockets—hundreds of students, teachers, and police officers have been injured, and thousands have been arrested, though the exact count includes an unknown number of people who arrived from outside the movement itself. The core complaint is straightforward: teachers vanish for weeks without replacement, school buildings are falling apart, and the day stretches until 6 p.m., leaving teenagers arriving home at seven with no time for sleep or homework. Madalena, a Paris student, told the BBC that during recent heat waves her school was unbearably hot. Others resent the ban on mobile phones or the opacity of Parcoursup, the government's algorithm for allocating university places—a system that has created genuine anxiety as roughly 80 percent of each age cohort now passes the baccalauréat and competes for spots in desirable programs.

On the surface, these are real problems. But the scale of the current movement—what Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called "unprecedented" in its reach and violence—cannot be explained by the grievances alone. The OECD, the club of wealthy democracies, reports that France actually spends more per high school student than the European Union average. Teacher shortages, while acute, are no worse than in other countries and by OECD measures are actually milder. Long school days stem mostly from extended lunch breaks and complex scheduling rather than from compressed instruction time. The holidays are not especially short by European standards. In most developed countries, 80 to 90 percent of young people complete secondary education, and competition for university places creates stress everywhere. The underfunding and decay are real, but they do not by themselves account for why students have chosen to blockade schools and risk arrest.

The answer lies in a political tradition that has made the street as powerful as parliament. French students know their history. In October 1990, a rape at a school in Seine-Saint-Denis—an area north of Paris that remains a center of current unrest—sparked mass rallies against underfunding and staff shortages. The government released the equivalent of €1.2 billion in today's money for lycées. In October 1998, half a million students marched across the country with similar demands, and the government responded with nearly €1 billion for school renovation and 14,000 new teaching posts. Student blockades have defeated government reforms before: a university overhaul in 1986, a lower youth minimum wage in 1994, and most strikingly, in 2006, a law loosening hiring and firing rules for workers under 26. That last measure had passed parliament and been signed by President Jacques Chirac, but weeks of blockades—some violent—forced its withdrawal. French adults have learned the same lesson. The gilets jaunes uprising of 2018 and 2019, which saw shops ransacked and government buildings attacked, led the government to drop a fuel tax increase and approve €10 billion in spending.

The current balance of power appears to favor the students. A poll for BMFTV found that 72 percent of French people regard their demands as legitimate, and 55 percent support the movement. Teachers, labour unions, and left-wing politicians have backed them. Another rally was planned for Thursday. The government, by contrast, has never been weaker. Emmanuel Macron, deeply unpopular after nine years in power, cannot run in the presidential election due in six months. His decision to call a snap election in June 2024 left parliament hopelessly gridlocked. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has described himself as the "weakest prime minister" in living memory and seems unlikely to pass a budget through parliament.

Yet that very weakness could become a shield. Lecornu faces rising borrowing costs, a deficit of 5.4 percent of GDP, and public debt at its highest level since the 1940s. Unlike his predecessors, who had resources to negotiate when facing street pressure, he has nothing to give. The students have history on their side and public opinion at their back. The government has neither money nor political capital. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object is still being written.