What do French student protesters want?

The protests began with one French high school in the outer suburbs of Paris, before swelling into a national movement that widely halted teaching and drew hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets.

Though the amount France spends on education as a percentage of GDP is comparable to other developed countries, the students have broad public sympathy and teachers’ unions have endorsed their demands.

So what are the issues driving the protests?

“I started protesting because the conditions in my school were disastrous,” said Ahmed (19), a high school student in Paris, as he marched in a demonstration estimated to number 110,000-250,000 people in the capital over the weekend.

“One floor is closed because the ceiling is rotten. There are mushrooms growing in the toilet. We’re lacking chairs and tables, there’s one class that doesn’t have a window,” he said.

“There are teachers missing, a lack of substitutes, there are classes where we just don’t have teachers since the start of the year. No nurse, no psychologist.”

Fanny had travelled from Marseilles to take part in the protest with her 14-year-old daughter Elena, the two marching arm in arm.

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“The classrooms are very degraded,” Elena said, adding that her class had 32 pupils for a single teacher and that the classrooms were too hot during this summer’s fierce heatwave.

Conditions in French schools vary. The government has said teacher shortages most affect schools that are considered to be difficult, making positions hard to fill.

It has acknowledged that some school buildings need to be rebuilt, but has said that local authorities have responsibility for structural maintenance.

Eliza, a 17-year-old from Paris, said conditions in her school were relatively good but that she had joined the protests to support other students.

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“It’s been almost a month since I don’t have classes,” she said. “We’re here today even though some of us are kind of scared because of the violence.”

A heavy-handed response by police to initial protests, in which several students were wounded by tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, swelled support for the protesters, particularly among university students.

Teaching has now been widely suspended or disrupted across French universities, and the protest movement has broadened to include a wide range of groups.

Protesters’ concerns about heavy-handed responses by the police can often outweigh any misgivings they might have about violence by protesters, or the arson and looting that broke out on the sidelines of protests on October 17th.

“I don’t think it’s great, things happened that shouldn’t have happened, but these things do happen when people are angry, and when you are trying to protect your rights you get gassed and chased,” Ahmed said.

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“When we started protesting it was peaceful, and police came and beat up minors,” he said. “My parents were worried about me coming today, a lot of people are afraid, and I think it’s not normal that we’re afraid to protest.”

The French government proposed a range of measures to meet student demands on Monday after meeting student representatives and online influencers.

This included the creation of 15,000 places at university, funding for university and school building renovations, a cap of 28 pupils on high school class sizes, and an indexation of student grants to inflation.

The government also proposed changing and ultimately replacing Parcoursup, an unpopular online platform for applying to university courses.

Student representatives welcomed the proposals, but said they would go ahead with protests scheduled for October 31st and November 5th, when French unions have declared nationwide strikes and protests to demand higher wages and investment in public services.

It comes as France faces pressure from international markets to rein in its deficit, after a week in which its long-term borrowing costs reached their highest level since 2002.