France’s Lycée Fight Leaves the School Gates Behind

French student unions called nationwide marches on Tuesday, October 13, after only 130 of the country’s 3,700 lycées stayed closed on Monday. The education ministry said closures were falling even as violence intensified, and the marches were due to feed a wider cost-of-living rally on Saturday, October 17, the first day of the Toussaint holidays.

Unions and the far-left France Unbowed party backed a Paris column from Place d’Italie at 14:00 local time toward the Invalides, near Matignon and the education ministry, with gatherings listed in about 30 cities. President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on Monday, said the pupils’ grievances would take time.

Only 130 Lycées Were Shut on Monday

On Thursday, October 8, the Interior Ministry counted 71,500 people in the streets, about 500 of them detained, after a peak of 256,000 on Tuesday, October 6, a figure unions put as high as 450,000. By Friday, October 9, 141 lycées were closed. By Monday the count was 130, more than 96% of the network open, which is the easing Matignon wanted before the break.

The original method was the school-gate blockade: dumpsters and other obstacles piled against lycée entrances, first around Créteil, then in Marseille, Lille, Lyon and Rennes. That form is shrinking. What is growing is the adult calendar around it, with teaching unions on strike notices, France Unbowed in the cortège, and a Saturday date that began on TikTok as a fuel-price protest and now has CGT backing “wherever the conditions are right.”

In Paris the declared route ran to the Invalides. A second, undeclared column from Hôtel de Ville toward Matignon circulated on social networks. L’Union étudiante told followers the government was not listening, so the march would go and find it. Police in Seine-Maritime posted a reinforced perimeter and a drone overflight for the same day.

The 3,024 Substitutes Were Already on Payroll

After the October 8 crowds, Education Minister Édouard Geffray went on TF1 and said 3,024 teachers would be sent, from October 9 through October 13, into 114 lycées classed red for staff shortages and overcrowding, with about 400 more rated orange. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu presented the same list as an action plan. A government spokeswoman said on Monday that assignments had begun.

Those 3,024 names are not new hires. They are almost all TZRs, titulaires sur zone de remplacement, certified secondary teachers already paid to cover absences, plus colleagues only partly assigned. Geffray also authorised academies to take on a few hundred contract staff and promised 18,000 extra “pacte” overtime shares, a scheme that pays volunteers for short cover inside their own schools.

Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the SNALC teachers’ union, sat in the October 9 ministry meeting and called the headline figure a trompe-l’œil. Some of the teachers, he said, do not match the subject or the zone where a gap actually exists. The one solid change, in his view, was permission to exceed the staffing cap and rehire contract teachers, often people whose contracts had not been renewed in September.

On ne va pas faire coïncider les besoins des établissements avec les personnels disponibles, qui ne le sont pas forcément sur la bonne zone, ni dans la bonne discipline.

Jean-Rémi Girard, president, SNALC, minutes of the 9 October ministry meeting

The same minutes record 3,024 staff without a classroom posting, an AI-assisted matching tool called Optima Rem trialled in Lyon, and a reminder that TZRs exist because unexpected absences arrive every day. Girard also said about 8,000 second-degree posts were cut in Emmanuel Macron’s first term while pupil numbers rose. The national students’ union dismissed the whole package as crumbs beside a demand for a €10 billion ($11 billion) lift for lycées.

What the Student Unions Want for €10 Billion

Ryad Rani, president of the Union syndicale lycéenne, said mobilisation would continue until that envelope was on the table and asked to be received at Matignon. Sabrine Kharbach, spokeswoman for L’Union étudiante, used the same 10 billion test on October 8, when student and staff unions called the October 13 day. Their joint list, also signed by Unef, Fage and Solidaires étudiant.e.s, runs to 10 emergency measures, from building work to a €1 student meal.

Parcoursup, the national platform that allocates higher-education places, sits near the centre of the quarrel. Unions want algorithmic selection dropped and 250,000 extra university places from September 2027. Lecornu has promised more transparency and asked ministers for improvements to the 2027 campaign before the end of October. An Ipsos-BVA poll published on October 11 found 54% of respondents backed the lycée movement, 82% backed a cap on class size and 79% backed renovating schools, while 48% backed scrapping Parcoursup and 34% backed cutting teaching hours.

THE OFFER AND THE UNION LIST

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the France Unbowed leader, told a Clermont-Ferrand meeting on October 11 that he would scrap what he called the ignominy of Parcoursup. Officials have accused his party of stoking the blockades. The party denies it. Bally Bagayoko, a France Unbowed member and mayor of Saint-Denis, said the shortfall in resources for children’s education was enough on its own.

Parents and Pupils Stuck Behind the Gates

The same closures that unions treat as leverage are, for some families, lost lessons. Clara Juillet, a university student in Tours, said she had been unable to attend classes for a week because of a blockade she was not part of. A Paris mother using the name Gladys called the blockades undemocratic by their nature. Geffray told the National Assembly on October 7 that 24 lycées had been burned or wrecked badly enough to keep about 30,000 pupils out of in-person class for weeks.

Geffray had already conceded the underlying numbers. On RTL he said almost 10% of hours in public secondary schools go untaught for one reason or another. The education statistics unit DEPP, for 2024-2025, put all untaught hours at 9.8%, a slice that includes exam invigilation days when no lesson can be held. The absence grievance is narrower, and harder.

THE HOURS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN

• Unreplaced absences: 7.5% of public secondary hours in 2024-2025, or 15.4 million hours, were lost because a teacher was away and not replaced.
• Short cover: About 9 in 10 absences shorter than 15 days went uncovered, against about 5% of long absences.
• Long-absence days: Unreplaced long-absence days nearly doubled from 491,479 in 2018-2019 to 949,493 in 2024-2025, in figures compiled for a Senate report by Olivier Paccaud.
• Loaded days: French lycée pupils are timetabled for 1,008 hours a year over 180 days, or 5.6 hours a day, against 908 hours over 188 days in Germany, according to Eurydice figures circulated on October 13.

SNES-FSU said 53% of public collèges and lycées began the 2026 year with at least one missing teacher, often as hours to cover rather than a vacant full-time post. DEPP counted 21,039 substitute teachers in public secondary schools at the 2025 count, 5.4% of that workforce. The rights of replacement teachers on a zone are already the most strained job in the system, Girard said, which is why moving the unused names around does not fill a maths hole in another academy.

Interior Ministry Pulled Stun Grenades After Lens

Most blockades have been peaceful. The injuries are not a side issue for the people in them. A 15-year-old lost a hand to a police stun grenade in Lens; Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez suspended those grenades at lycée protests on October 7. Another protester lost many teeth to a tear-gas canister fired at close range. A 16-year-old in Tours lost the use of an eye. Rights groups have called the force against minors disproportionate. Police have opened 24 internal inquiries into brutality allegations.

Lecornu earlier put the school-system toll at 215 teenagers and 85 staff, and 715 police officers hurt, which he called the heaviest bill in decades for the school system. On Monday, October 12, the education ministry said eight teaching staff were injured in protest-related incidents, mostly in the Paris region, Bordeaux and Lyon. Fireworks fired through a tube that day hurt two school workers in Reims, one in a Paris suburb and a police officer outside a Marseille school. A 14-year-old was also arrested near Marseille after a middle-school head and a teacher were shot with a hunting rifle; police treated that shooting as a separate case.

THE CUSTODY AND INJURY COUNT

• Taken into custody: 6,877 people since the movement began, 86% of them minors, according to the latest judicial tally.
• Police hurt: 715 officers, in the prime minister’s running total.
• Pupils and staff: 215 teenagers and 85 school staff in that same mid-protest count, before Monday’s eight additional staff injuries.
• Inquiries: 24 internal investigations into alleged brutality against demonstrators.

Leo, a 19-year-old graphic-design student in Paris, said pupils were not being heard and were shaken by a level of repression he had not seen in a student movement. Sophie Binet, general secretary of the CGT, wrote that a government had not answered a lycée mobilisation this way since May 1968, and she used CGT’s appeal to stand with the pupils to put Tuesday’s marches on a union map. David Lisnard, the mayor who leads the Nouvelle Énergie movement, drew the other line: a minority of wreckers to punish, and a majority of lycée students who want to work and should be allowed to.

Saturday’s Rally Opens the Toussaint Break

Naila, a 17-year-old in Rennes, said she wanted Tuesday’s demonstration to converge with Saturday’s. That is the hinge. October 13 is a school-and-union day, with the budget in the National Assembly. October 17 is a public Saturday, the first day of the holidays, born as a cost-of-living and fuel-price call and now carried by accounts close to the old yellow-vest networks, with the CGT saying it will be there where local conditions allow.

Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU, said after Lecornu’s earlier television address that the prime minister had produced a blank sheet and was playing for time. Replies under Lecornu’s own letter made the same charge in blunter words, comparing the five files to grievance books that were opened and then ignored, and pointing to a freeze on housing aid and to teaching posts due to come out of the next budget. Binet asked the government to drop 1,588 planned teaching-post cuts, hire counsellors and nurses, fund insulation, and scrap Parcoursup.

FROM CRÉTEIL TO THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND

1. September 18, 2026: Pupils at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil strike over vacant teaching posts; a blockade follows on September 21 and then spreads through Île-de-France.
2. October 4, 2026: Lecornu sends ministers a letter with five files and a promise of first decisions before the end of the month, plus €1.2 billion extra in the 2027 education budget.
3. October 6, 2026: Interior Ministry counts 256,000 marchers, the largest day so far.
4. October 7, 2026: Nuñez suspends stun grenades at lycée protests after the Lens injury.
5. October 8, 2026: 71,500 people counted in the streets; Geffray announces the 3,024 TZR deployments on TF1.
6. October 12, 2026: 130 of 3,700 lycées closed; eight staff injured in protest-related incidents.
7. October 13, 2026: Fifth national day of marches, Paris from Place d’Italie to the Invalides at 14:00.
8. October 16-17, 2026: Ministry assessment of the replacement plan due October 16; cost-of-living rallies and the Toussaint break open on October 17.

The consultation opened for pupils remains open until October 23. SNALC was told it had already drawn more than 70,000 contributions. First decisions, Lecornu said, still sit at the end of October, after the holiday emptying of the yards.

Matignon Promised First Decisions by Late October

Macron’s public line on Monday was patience. “These are issues that deserve time, consultations, discussion and respect,” he said. The operational text is the October 4 letter: assure lessons, improve premises with the regions, rework the school day, make Parcoursup clearer, and follow up what pupils say. Those five workstreams set out on 4 October are also the delay that unions are marching against.

Le Gouvernement fait aujourd’hui un pas supplémentaire pour répondre aux difficultés des lycéens et des personnels éducatifs. Je confie aux ministres une feuille de route avec cinq chantiers et de premières décisions attendues avant la fin du mois. Le ministre de l’Education… pic.twitter.com/1CcjHTI8sv

— Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) October 4, 2026

Lecornu wrote that the 2027 budget debate would fund visible changes, and that the state would not yield to violence, including a faster track for a “casseur-payeur” bill to make vandals pay for damage. Buildings, the letter noted, are a regional duty. Substitutes can be moved this week. A €10 billion plan cannot. The ministry asked for a first reading of the replacement plan by October 16, the Friday before the holiday marches.