France pledges to appoint 3,000 additional teachers to contain student protests

The French government showed the first signs of backing down in the face of teenage student protests, pledging to provide three thousand additional substitute teachers in the coming days.

French Education Minister Edouard Geoffrey announced this pledge during a television interview on Thursday evening, with the end of another day of demonstrations organized by high school students, sometimes punctuated by violence.

The government says that 6,877 people have been arrested since the outbreak of protests demanding that more resources be allocated to secondary education, and that 86 percent of them are under the age of eighteen.

In what unions described as the "fourth chapter" of the movement that has been going on for three weeks, about 71,000 people participated in protests across the country on Thursday, including 24,000 who gathered in Place de la Bastille in the capital, Paris.

The police intervened again, using tear gas to disperse groups that attacked their members with sidewalk stones and homemade fireworks.

In the city of Bordeaux, a secondary school was subjected to acts of vandalism by protesters, while a school deputy principal was beaten in the city of Marseille.

On Friday, about 140 secondary schools, out of 3,500 schools, were closed completely or partially, a significant decrease compared to the previous days. But calls were made to organize a new protest day next Tuesday.

Jeffrey's announcement represents the government's first concrete concession in response to protesters' demands.

Those involved in the education sector in France have long agreed that students lose a large number of school hours due to the absence of teachers and the lack of available substitute teachers to fill the shortage.

The minister said that a new computer program that the ministry will begin using will allow three thousand substitute teachers to be directed to about 500 secondary schools that have been identified as being most in need.

Many of these schools are likely to be on the outskirts of cities with large immigrant populations, where the teacher shortage is greatest.

Jeffrey also said that additional funding would be allocated under an already existing program to encourage teachers who wish to work extra hours to fill the shortage.

The minister also pledged to take students' complaints into account during the upcoming discussions regarding education allocations in the state's general budget for 2027.

However, the offer did not include any pledge of major new investments that would satisfy the protesters.

The government is keen to avoid appearing to be seeking to buy social peace, as it realizes that France's fragile debt situation is closely monitored by international financial markets.

The reactions of the leaders of the protest movement were very cautious.

Nathaniel Compari, representative of the Secondary Education Renewal union, said that students are waiting to see how the pledge will be implemented on the ground.

He added: "We received some announcements that meet part of our demands, but it is clear that people want to see money and more tangible results."

For her part, Sabreen Kharbash, from the Student Union, said: “Unless ten billion euros are put on the table, we will continue our movements.”

In a post on the X platform, Mélenchon praised Thursday's demonstrations, saying the students had "reclaimed the Bastille."

On the other hand, a spokesman for the far-right National Rally party criticized the concessions made by the government.

“The message is that if you vandalize, you get gains,” Laurent Jacobelli said. “When you burn cars and attack the police, you get something in return. This legitimizes violence.”

This movement is considered the largest wave of unrest led by schoolchildren in France in many years, and comes in light of escalating tension in the country, amid fears of the outbreak of other protests due to anger over rising fuel prices and the difficulties faced by the agricultural sector.