French student demonstrations: What’s behind the anger?
Author, Henri Astier
Published 6 minutes ago
Reading time: 3 minutes
Students across France have been protesting against insufficient education funding since late September and have blocked many high school entrances.
The movement turned violent in some places - hundreds of students, teachers and police officers were injured and thousands were arrested, including an unknown number of outside troublemakers.
Protesters complain about teacher shortages and dilapidated facilities in the country's high schools - where students aged 15 to 18 attend.
"Sometimes our teachers are absent for weeks and there is no substitute," Parisian student Madalena told the BBC on Tuesday (October 6).
On that day, demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people broke out across France. The student added that during the recent heat wave, the school building was "as hot as a steamer."
There are various other complaints.
Some people are dissatisfied with the ban on the use of mobile phones in schools, or the shortening of school dismissal time to 18:00.
"I don't get home until 19:00, so I don't have time to sleep or do homework," a high school student told France 2.
France’s online platform “Parcoursup”, which is responsible for allocating higher education places (Editor’s note: similar to the Taiwan University Admission Distribution System or Hong Kong JUPAS), is another pain point.
There is a long history of student dissatisfaction.
Today, about 80% of students in each grade pass the baccalauréat (French college entrance examination) and are thus eligible for university admission—but not necessarily in their preferred major. That has led to students scrambling for popular courses and anxiety focused on Parcoursup, an admissions system seen by many as opaque.
These dissatisfactions are real. But do they in themselves explain the form that protest movements take? How does France compare to other countries?
According to a recent report by the OECD, a club of developed countries, the French government spends more per student on high school education than the EU average for high schools.
The teacher shortage is indeed serious, but it is no more serious than elsewhere.
The situation in France is actually more modest by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards - there are fewer vacancies - although French teachers' salaries are relatively low.
For French students, having classes late in the afternoon is a real problem. This is mainly due to long lunch breaks and complicated course schedules, rather than long holidays - which are not very long in France compared to other EU countries.
Extended school days have long been a regrettable phenomenon in French school life, making it difficult to explain the current outbreak.
Furthermore, the stress of a dysfunctional higher education system cannot explain this wave of demonstrations.
Because, in most European countries, 80% to 90% of young people will complete secondary education, and the competition for good university places will also cause pressure in other aspects.
While insufficient funding, dilapidated buildings and concerns about the future are at the root of student dissatisfaction, as Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez put it, these complaints alone do not explain why the movement has become "unprecedented" in terms of the number of schools, the number of students and the level of violence.
The scale of the protests is all the more remarkable given the considerable risks taken by participants.
Locking down a school or university with threats or force is illegal and attracts police and vandals, and students are often caught up in often heavy-handed police crowd control operations.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu emphasized in his latest speech that French security forces had not been ordered to "confront high school students" but were only enforcing the law in accordance with the law.
In this regard, to understand students' strategies, we must go beyond the school's cordon and explore the political traditions behind it.
Because, in France, power often lies in the hands of elected institutions as well as in the streets.
Students understand this.
In October 1990, a rape at a school in Seine-Saint-Denis, an area north of Paris and the focus of current unrest, triggered large-scale protests, with people taking to the streets to protest against insufficient school funding and teacher shortages.
Ultimately, the government allocated the equivalent of 1.2 billion euros (US$1.342 billion; 8.997 billion yuan; NT$42.993 billion) in today's currency to fund high school education.
In October 1998, 500,000 students in France held demonstrations across the country to make similar demands, and eventually secured nearly 1 billion euros to renovate schools and hire 14,000 additional teaching staff.
Student protests have repeatedly defeated government reforms - such as university reform in 1986 and a lower youth minimum wage in 1994.
In perhaps the most dramatic show of student power, in 2006, they withdrew a law that would have relaxed hiring and firing rules for workers under 26 to tackle youth unemployment.
The measure was passed by parliament and signed by then-President Jacques Chirac, but was repealed after weeks of lockdowns at universities and secondary schools, often with violence.
French adults have proven that blocking roads can defeat elected officials.
The "Gilets Jaunes" movement of 2018-2019 - which saw shops looted and government buildings attacked across the country - forced the government to cancel planned fuel tax increases and approve 10 billion euros in spending.
However, the law of the streets does not always win.
In 1968 - a heroic precedent cited by every French protest movement - a student uprising was finally quelled by elections.
But these high school students inherited a political culture in which demonstrators compete with elected officials to be seen as the legitimate voices of the people.
On the surface it appears that the current balance of power favors students.
According to a BFMTV poll, 72% of French people believe their demands are reasonable and 55% support the movement.
But it is this weakness that may actually become an asset in the confrontation between the prime minister and the students. Faced with rising borrowing costs, a deficit of 5.4% of domestic product, and the highest public debt since the 1940s, Le Corny is at his wits end both financially and politically.
Unlike his predecessors, who had something to offer under intense pressure on the streets. The Prime Minister now has no leverage in exchange for concessions from the protesters.
