France was battling a wave of violent unrest around schools on Friday as fires, attacks on police and education staff, widespread vandalism and thousands of arrests increasingly overshadowed claims that the mobilisation was simply a student protest over classroom conditions.
Around 400 high schools were shut on Friday and about 5,000 people, mostly teenagers, have been arrested since Monday, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. Sixty-five education workers, including 40 headteachers, have been injured.
French authorities now say the movement has undergone a fundamental transformation.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray described what began as legitimate student discontent as having been taken over by ultra-violent groups, while the government has formally characterised the situation as “urban violence”.
A French intelligence assessment cited by the government has also put La France Insoumise (LFI) and groups linked to the ultra-left at the centre of efforts to organise and amplify the mobilisation.
Matignon said intelligence services viewed LFI and its ultra-left “proxies” as being behind the movement, an allegation vehemently rejected by the party.
French conservative newspaper Le Figaro devoted extensive coverage on Friday to what it described as the role played by LFI in the mobilisation, including an intelligence note examining the party’s involvement.
The newspaper also reported the arrest of far-left activist Ritchy Thibault, a former parliamentary assistant to LFI lawmaker Ersilia Soudais, near one of the school blockades. Thibault was already under judicial supervision and barred from attending demonstrations.
Europe 1 reported LFI activists directly participating in school mobilisations in Lyon and highlighted appearances by senior party figures at blockades elsewhere.
LFI parliamentary leader Mathilde Panot addressed pupils during the mobilisation, telling them that “the government is afraid of you” and urging them not to give up, according to Europe 1.
LFI lawmaker Aymeric Caron was also filmed addressing students through a megaphone while standing near a Palestinian flag.
The party denies encouraging violence and says it is supporting legitimate demands by young people.
But the scenes unfolding around some schools have increasingly resembled riots rather than conventional demonstrations.
Police have seized baseball bats, Molotov cocktails, masks, fireworks, stones and balaclavas from people involved in the unrest, according to images and police information reported by Valeurs Actuelles.
In Paris, a trainee police lieutenant was chased through the street by a group during Thursday’s disorder, knocked to the ground and repeatedly struck.
Video of the assault prompted outrage and the officer was expected to file a complaint on Friday.
In Belfort, a senior police officer was beaten unconscious while attempting to arrest a suspected arsonist.
Prosecutors opened an investigation for attempted homicide following the attack, according to Valeurs Actuelles.
Schools themselves have also been attacked.
The entrance hall of Nelson-Mandela high school in Nantes was engulfed in flames on Thursday, while other buildings, rubbish containers and barricades have been set ablaze across the country.
In Haubourdin in northern France, facilities near Lycée Beaupré were ransacked. A football clubhouse was wrecked, televisions were destroyed, windows smashed and a nearby community hall was looted, Europe 1 reported.
Regional authorities say the bill for damage to schools has already reached several million euros in Île-de-France, Grand Est and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes alone.
Violence has also targeted school administrators.
A headteacher at Lycée de la Méditerranée in La Ciotat was reported on Friday to have been splashed with petrol and beaten while trying to calm an extremely tense confrontation outside the school.
The scale of the disorder has fuelled questions over whether demands about school funding adequately explain what is happening on the streets.
Europe 1 reporters speaking to people around the blockades found some participants unable to clearly identify what they were protesting about.
One pupil told the broadcaster that staying away from lessons provided several days to “rest and enjoy ourselves”, while another reportedly confused LFI with Algeria’s FLN when asked about the political forces supporting the movement.
The movement has also reached some of France’s most prestigious and well-resourced schools.
Students at Paris’s elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand joined Friday’s blockades despite attending an institution Le Figaro described as possessing exceptional facilities.
Participants there argued that they were demonstrating in solidarity with pupils attending poorer schools rather than because of conditions at their own establishment.
The political battle surrounding the unrest has consequently intensified.
François-Xavier Bellamy, vice-president of the conservative Republicans, called the mobilisation a “laboratory of chaos” and said the question of dissolving LFI should be considered.
Those are Bellamy’s political assessments rather than established findings, but they illustrate how sharply perceptions of the unrest have shifted as images of burning schools and attacks on police have spread.
Le Figaro’s Friday edition similarly focused heavily on allegations that LFI was encouraging the mobilisation for political purposes ahead of France’s 2027 presidential election. LFI rejects those allegations.
The government has acknowledged that complaints about teacher shortages, infrastructure and education spending existed before the violence erupted.
But authorities increasingly distinguish between pupils peacefully voicing those grievances and organised or opportunistic groups using school blockades as opportunities for confrontation, vandalism and attacks on public servants.
That distinction has become difficult to ignore as France enters another weekend facing burned schools, injured police and teachers, millions of euros in damage and thousands of arrests.
