FRENCH Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ordered regular classes suspended yesterday and today so that headteachers could hold sessions with school students, after trade unions joined pupils in marches across more than 40 cities on Tuesday.
The Interior Ministry put Tuesday’s turnout at about 256,000, including 56,000 in Paris.
Teachers, parents and university students joined the protests, which began in late September in the Paris suburbs and have spread to hundreds of schools.
Students are demanding replacements for absent teachers, smaller classes, safe and sanitary buildings, and school nurses and counsellors.
Many also complain of school days running from 8am to 6pm and of months-long waits on the state website for university applications.
Lecornu told MPs on Tuesday that 215 students and 85 school staff had been injured, blaming ‘violent individuals who mingle with the nonviolent high school students’.
Around 6,000 people have been arrested since the movement began, most of them minors.
Rights groups say much of the violence has come from the police, who fired tear gas in Paris and other cities on Tuesday.
Amnesty International France has documented a 15-year-old who lost his hand to a grenade in Lens, a 16-year-old who lost the sight of one eye to a rubber projectile and a 14-year-old whose face was badly injured by a tear gas canister fired at close range.
‘Youth protesting must be heard, not repressed,’ it said.
The Syndicat de la Magistrature, a leading union of judges and prosecutors, and the Human Rights League have accused police of disproportionate force against students as young as 14.
‘The police watchdog has opened inquiries into incidents in Sevran, Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône and Tours, where a youth suffered head injuries.
The government accuses the far-left France Unbowed party, which supports the students, of fomenting the unrest, which the party denies.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has told prosecutors to pursue parents for damage to schools. Ministers have dropped plans for enrolment fees on vocational and preparatory courses.
