Police arrest 164 as high school protests disrupt 180 French schools ahead of national strike

Nationwide school disruptions and arrests

French law enforcement arrested 164 people on Monday, 28 September 2026, following widespread demonstrations and blockades that affected 180 high schools across the country. Official figures reported by the Ministry of the Interior detailed 27 complete school blockades alongside 50 attempted blockades during the morning hours. The unrest remained concentrated in the Paris metropolitan region, notably within the Créteil and Versailles school districts, but also spread to major cities including Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Marseille, and Nice. In the Alpes-Maritimes department, ten schools faced disruption across Nice, Grasse, Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Menton, resulting in ten individual arrests for offences such as projectile throwing, mortar fire, deliberate arson, grouped violence, theft, and property damage. The day of protest resulted in injuries to twelve police officers, eight school staff members including three headteachers, and twelve students. French police opened internal inquiries to review officer conduct following the confrontations.

Grievances over classroom conditions and staff shortages

The protest wave started late the prior week in the Île-de-France region, where around 60 secondary institutions experienced initial blockades before actions expanded nationwide. Demonstrating secondary students voiced mounting frustration over severe teacher shortages, unmanageable class schedules, and crowded classrooms lacking basic material support. In Lille, students cited high school canteen costs, unmaintained boarding school dormitories infested with bedbugs and containing broken showers, and classrooms suffering from poor insulation that made rooms excessively hot in summer and cold in winter. Educational authorities in the Créteil district recorded increasing mobilization across the Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne departments, while student walkouts also reached smaller provincial centres such as Sedan in the Ardennes department.

Government reaction and allegations of outside violence

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez and Education Minister Édouard Geffray condemned the incidents, describing the blockades as urban violence rather than legitimate school activism. Nuñez announced that law enforcement deployments would remain active outside educational establishments to prevent further disruption. Geffray stated that school principals reported hooded, equipped individuals from outside the student body who entered protest perimeters to fire pyrotechnic mortars at buildings and pupils. To address student concerns within institutional channels, Geffray instructed regional academy rectors to order headteachers to organize high school life councils and administrative assemblies.

When there is violence, it is committed by outside individuals who arrive hooded, equipped, provided with mortars and know how to use them.

Political dispute and calls for further blockades

The government's policing strategy triggered sharp political exchanges with the left-wing opposition party La France Insoumise. Party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused the administration of orchestrating violent repression against peaceful teenagers and instructed opposition representatives to position themselves between police officers and students outside school gates. Geffray rejected the accusations as defamatory, arguing that opposition politicians were exploiting school unrest for partisan goals. The high school student union Union Syndicale Lycéenne called for a general blockade of all French secondary schools on Tuesday, 29 September 2026, aligning student demonstrations with a scheduled national public sector strike.

The students in movement are harmless. The Lecornu government ordered the repression. This ferocity is irresponsible with an obvious racist aftertaste. Hands off our youth.