Maisa, a 17-year-old in a poor Paris suburb who aspires to be an English teacher, joined tens of thousands of other students and their supporters this week in protests that spread across France over dilapidated schools, classroom overcrowding and teacher shortages.

At Lycee Le Corbusier school in Aubervilliers, a suburb north of Paris in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, protesters said schools in poor neighborhoods like theirs faced the worst conditions.

Last year I took the high school French exam without a French teacher, and teachers have a huge impact,“ Maisa said.

“These are not conditions to study in.” As protests raged at more than 1,200 French high schools this week, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in some cases. More than 5,000 people were arrested, and some protesters were seriously hurt with eye injuries, broken teeth and blows to the head. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called it a “climate of unacceptable violence” and called for order.

Amelia, 15, joined Maisa in the crowd outside the school gates and held a sign reading, “Our address should not decide our future”. She said she was demonstrating to demand the same rights as students elsewhere in the country.

“The education authority is not investing enough in the suburbs. It’s classist and racist,” she said.

Ulysse Rabate, a political scientist at Paris 8 University, said the protests show the way that France’s marginalised urban neighbourhoods are increasingly influencing national politics.

“When there is a collapse of the public service, of public education, those who feel it the most, and the most violently, are those at bottom,” he said.

Political flashpoint

The nationwide demonstrations and blockades, which began last week, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced a series of deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday.

The education budget is set to increase by a below-inflation 1.7 per cent to 65.53 billion, excluding teacher pensions.

The education ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said that education remained a priority and the below-inflation budget increase was due to population decline.

The protests started in the Parisian suburbs, where poverty levels are high, then spread to Paris itself and other French towns, including Marseille, Strasbourg, Tours and Lille.

At Lycee Le Corbusier, classes including maths, humanities, English and sport have been cancelled since the start of the academic year due to a teacher shortage, according to Karima Kara Ali, an elected parent representative.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, two-thirds of high schools took part in protests on Thursday, the CGT labour union said. Youth, teachers and parents in four towns complained of unsanitary school conditions and chronic staff shortages including of nurses and social workers.

Louise Paternoster, a representative for the Seine-Saint-Denis branch of the CGT’s education union, said the area does not get adequate resources for its student population and their educational needs.

Two-thirds of schools in the department have unfilled teacher positions, according to a union survey.

Not enough teachers

“Our students are losing out on study time. Some schools don’t have drinking water. We are not equal to other departments,” she said, blaming shortages on government cuts of 3,256 teacher positions nationwide in 2026.

In Pantin, a town on the northeastern edge of Paris, teacher Dilan Roche joined her students as they protested outside their school this week to support their demands and protect them from the police.

“What they wrote on banners, we wrote in a letter to the local education authority: overcrowded classes, no nurses, no social workers which is problematic for students with learning difficulties, many living in precarity,” she said.

While France ranks in the middle of OECD countries for spending on education, the average expenditure per secondary school student has remained little changed over the last decade, standing at 11,660 in 2024 and 11,910 in 2010, according to education ministry data.

The last nationwide high school protest movement on this scale demanding more funding came in the 1990s. That followed the government sharply expanding access to the baccalaurat, the school-leaving exam that typically paves the way to university, without providing schools with sufficient additional resources, said Professor Clemence Cardon-Quint at Paul Valery University, who researches education funding.

The movement won an increase in funding, but spending per student later stagnated despite growing demands on schools.

Cardon-Quint said students and teachers have taken on additional responsibilities over the years, including navigating Parcoursup, the university admissions system introduced in 2018 and criticised by some students and teachers as opaque and discriminatory.

“In a period of budgetary restraint, it is more difficult to reduce inequalities,” said Cardon-Quint.