Why Are French High School Students Taking to the Streets?

On September 21, students in Créteil blockaded their school. Two weeks later, the movement, which originated in the Île-de-France region, had spread to several cities across the country, with blockades, demonstrations and school closures. According to figures cited in the video, on Thursday, October 1 alone, protests were recorded at 610 schools. These protests are already considered the largest of the past decade, and the movement, according to the host, is continuing and intensifying.

Arthur acknowledges that footage is circulating of confrontations and violent crackdowns, with people seriously injured. But for this first video on the subject, the show chooses to "take a step back" and start with the reasons behind the anger.

The first reason, the one that specifically set off the movement in Créteil, is the shortage of teachers, which, according to students, prevents them from succeeding in their studies. One student explains that the previous year, he went without a math teacher for ten months, even though he had to sit the math exam for the baccalauréat, which, he says, hurt a lot of students.

The video draws on a survey by the teachers' unions SNES and FSU: at the start of this school year, at least one teacher was missing in 53% of middle and high schools. When widened to all school staff, such as student life advisers (CPEs) and nurses, 69% of schools were operating with an incomplete teaching team.

To explain these shortages, Arthur turns to enrollment. Between 2015 and 2025, French middle and high schools took in 112,100 additional students. Over the same period, the number of teachers per class remained roughly stable, or even declined slightly: 191 positions have been lost since 2015.

This overall figure, however, hides a gap between sectors. Private schools gained 534 teaching positions over ten years, while public middle and high schools lost 725. According to the host, this inequality shows up in the classroom: in public high schools on the general and technological track, 69% of classes now have more than 30 students. The teacher shortage therefore means both fewer classes and lower-quality classes, as teachers have to cope with larger numbers of students.

The second grievance concerns physical conditions, which have reportedly deteriorated sharply. For those who haven't set foot in a high school in a long time, the video lets students describe their daily lives: rats and cockroaches, students forced to stand because there aren't enough chairs or because they're broken, too few tables, no maintenance. One student says they suffer from the heat at the start of the school year and from the cold in the middle of it, with the radiators "stuck on 3" and not working. According to Ministry of National Education data cited in the video, one school in ten is considered severely dilapidated.

Is the state investing too little in education? Arthur first points out that the National Education budget is one of the state's largest spending items. But once inflation is taken into account, that budget is stagnating, even as needs are growing.

The video also highlights sharp disparities depending on which school students attend. In Île-de-France, the budget allocated per high school student is €2,380, compared with €4,020 in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, nearly double. Inequalities also exist within the same region, and they are fueling the protests. One student explains that his school, located in the city center, has relatively decent resources, but that he and his classmates are blockading it in solidarity with schools in the suburbs, where, according to him, students work in "impossible" conditions.

Summing up, Arthur lists crumbling buildings, overcrowded classes and absent teachers, on top of which come extra-long school days and the stress of Parcoursup. It is this accumulation of problems, he says, that explains why students have been mobilizing in ever greater numbers for more than two weeks.

At this point, the government has not offered a very concrete response to the movement, according to the video, and many accuse it of a security-focused, repressive response: 119 people have been injured since the protests began. Arthur notes that the issue of violence, which is also fueling the protests, was not covered in this episode, and offers to devote a future video to it if viewers show interest.