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French lycée pupils plan new national demonstration next week
Education minister begins to outline changes including 3,000 teachers added
Unions representing French lycée pupils (aged 15 - 17/18) have called for another day of nationwide protests next Tuesday (October 13).
The call has been echoed by university students and trade unions, who are set to join in with demonstrations as they did earlier this week.
Since protests spread on September 28, nearly 7,000 people have been placed into police custody, 86% of these minors, said the justice ministry in a report published today.
“At this stage, 2,376 people are facing prosecution,” including 1,923 minors, the ministry added.
Protests have seen widespread violence, with more than 1,000 injuries.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray announced that 3,000 teachers from an existing pool of staff (not currently working in schools) would be employed and sent to lycées across France, and there are plans to offer schools additional recruitment and teaching hours.
An online platform for students to air concerns has already seen well over 40,000 contributions, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said concrete changes based on comments will be announced by the end of October.
However, calls to end the use of the ‘Parcoursup’ platform, used by lycée students to apply for university, have been rejected.
Are protests losing steam?
The calls for another round of demonstrations came after nationwide protests on Thursday (October 8) saw a significantly lower turnout than on Tuesday (October 6).
The CGT counted 130,000 protestors yesterday, with the interior ministry counting 71,500.
This is much lower than estimations for Tuesday, which were 450,000 (according to protest organisers) and 256,000 (interior ministry figures), later revised up to 266,000.
The graphic below shows the number of lycées impacted by protests since September 28.
Next week’s protests will make it clearer whether promises by the government have helped to convince some students, if the movement is naturally losing momentum, or if protesters will be invigorated once more.
Today, the vast majority of lycées are open, with only 140 (less than 4%) closed. Most universities are also open and remain without disruption.
Student union groups are determined that next week’s action will see a high turnout, however.
“Until €10 billion is put on the table, we will keep mobilising,” said Sabrine Kharbach, spokesperson for the student union ‘Union etudiante’ to FranceInfo.
