Sébastien Lecornu deplored on Wednesday 149 injured among teaching staff on the sidelines of the high school student movement, “the heaviest toll that the Ministry (of National Education, Editor’s note) has ever had to experience”. They were generally injured “deliberately by individuals, students or not, who targeted them with mortars or objects,” said Minister of National Education Édouard Geffray earlier.
The Prime Minister also indicated that 937 police officers and gendarmes were injured, including 40 on Tuesday, a new day of mobilization for high school students, paying “a heartfelt tribute to those who provide the public service of security”. No details were provided on the seriousness or circumstances of the injuries. Some 248 students were also injured, “very often in the context of urban violence,” said the tenant of Matignon. Among them, several high school students were seriously injured.
Sébastien Lecornu reiterated that the high school student movement had been “exploited by (its) allies of France Insoumise” to try “to recover it for electoral purposes”. “You are playing a double game with your allies of rebellious France on this subject. From the beginning you have been blowing on the embers, and then you pretend to condemn the violence, and even then you forgot to do so. This hypocrisy does harm (...) to France” and “to the public service of National Education”, he added, applauded from the RN to the central bloc.
Two thirds of replacement teachers have been assigned to students since Friday, or 2,000 out of the 3,000 promised by the government, the Ministry of National Education said on Wednesday.
In an attempt to respond to the anger of high school students mobilized in the street, who complain about teachers not being replaced sometimes for months, the Minister of National Education promised Thursday to assign 3,000 regular teachers to the replacement zone (TZR), presented as unassigned at the moment.
He also announced the hiring of contract workers. To date, “170 contract workers have already been recruited by the academies on the basis of the authorization of 920 that I gave them,” Édouard Geffray told the National Assembly on Wednesday.
At the start of the September school year, the unions warned of the sidelining of hundreds of contract teachers, who had not been recalled by the rectorates, a consequence of the reform of teacher competitions.
The authorities' response to the high school students' movement is "lamentable", judged star actor Omar Sy on Wednesday, who believes that young people are being "reprimanded" without listening to what they have to say. “It’s our kids, it’s the future of our country who is telling a country that is completely adrift “I have a direction”,” the actor, who came to promote the new season of “Lupin” on Netflix, explained on France Inter.
“When I see that we don’t react to that, and that the reflex is to prevent them from speaking, or to hit them in the face or even to put them in front of each other to have childish fights, I find that lamentable,” he continued.
“Before we start to reprimand, punish (...), we don’t listen to them at all. But worse than that, we ask them to be silent and then we ask them to come to an agreement (while) we don’t even know what they have to say,” continued Omar Sy. “Oh but oh! They have something to say,” he said. “Come, let’s calm down, we’ll listen to them and then we’ll see.”
The Besançon Court of Appeal on Wednesday ordered the release of a 17-year-old teenager, incarcerated for ten days and indicted for hitting a police officer in the head as part of the high school movement in Belfort, a judicial source announced to AFP. The investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal granted a request to this effect filed by the high school student's lawyer, Arié Alimi. The young man, who is due to be released from prison during the day on Wednesday, has been placed under strict judicial supervision.
“Obviously we are satisfied [but] I would have been more satisfied if he had not been placed in pre-trial detention,” commented the lawyer. The young man of Bulgarian nationality, who will be 18 at the end of the month, is indicted for aggravated violence after the beating of a police officer on October 2 during clashes near the Courbet high school.
The teenager also filed a complaint for “attempted murder” against this police officer, who had previously tried to arrest him, and who, according to him, tried to drown him by holding his head in the water of a stream. Four other high school students were also indicted in the investigation into the violence against the police officer, but only the young Bulgarian was placed in pre-trial detention.
The family of the high school student whose hand was torn off by a police grenade on the sidelines of demonstrations in front of his high school is becoming a civil party, to obtain “a calm, impartial investigation” and “to know the truth,” one of his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Me Bertrand Wattez announced that he had filed a new complaint, this time with the constitution of a civil party, for willful violence having resulted in permanent disability in order to obtain that an investigating judge be seized, with the hope of a trial before the assizes or a criminal court.
Evan, 15, a secondary school student who wanted to become a carpenter, has, according to his defense, denied having picked up the grenade which tore off his left hand and denied any participation in violence.
The Béthune prosecutor, Étienne Thieffry, reported Friday that “all the testimonies, […] with the exception of one, converge” on the fact that the grenade fired from a long distance “landed on the ground”, before one of the demonstrators “grabbed it until it exploded”.
Evan “was near the grenade but had no intention of grabbing it at all,” Mr. Wattez insisted during a press conference, adding: “We were shocked to see the prosecution take up the police’s version.”
“Saturday October 17, 2026. Remember the date,” says a user on TikTok, speaking directly to the camera. Faced with soaring fuel prices, which reached new records in September, calls to demonstrate in mid-October have been increasing in recent days, particularly online. Many want a return of the “yellow vest” movement, which was also structured on social networks in 2018, after an increase in prices at the pump. “The return of the yellow vests. There is no more fear among the people!”, “Same fight, same anger, stronger than before!”, we can read on posters relaying the upcoming mobilization.
These publications found a lot of response on Facebook, which allowed the first “yellow vests” to organize. According to the social media monitoring tool Visibrain, nearly 48,000 publications were recorded on the platform over the last fortnight. On the side of
The high school student blinded at the end of September on the sidelines of high school demonstrations in Tours has “left the hospital,” his lawyer announced to AFP on Wednesday, the day after a police officer was indicted “for aggravated violence.” Young Maël, 16, “left the hospital this weekend,” his lawyer Colin Verguet told AFP. “Medical follow-up remains necessary, but he is now back at the family home. It’s a first satisfaction.”
Tuesday evening, the Tours public prosecutor's office announced the indictment and placement under judicial supervision of a police officer responsible for an LBD (defense ball thrower) shot. This announcement was described as a “good surprise” by the high school student’s lawyer, who believes that the investigations “were rapid”.
The police officer is also prohibited from carrying and possessing an LBD. Another police officer is placed under the status of assisted witness, according to a press release from the Tours public prosecutor, Catherine Sorita-Minard. She indicated, following forensic examinations, that the injuries to the teenager's eye were “compatible with the impact of an LBD type defense bullet”.
While several substitute teachers told the media of having been called to teach in a discipline that was not theirs, Édouard Geffray, Minister of National Education, affirmed on BFMTV that these were “material errors” on the part of personnel responsible for human resources in rectorates.
“We can never teach anything other than the discipline for which we were recruited […]. There can sometimes be material errors, especially when you have an action like that, very quickly, which causes the person who assigns the agents to make a mistake,” he explained. Regarding school schedules, he planned to “instruct things so that the next [government]”, after the presidential election, “can make decisions”.
“I am not going to change my baccalaureate six months before a presidential election”, that would be “madness”, he said again, while the high school reform of 2018, removing the L, ES, S sectors, has made timetables more complex.
Between the fuel crisis, the anger of high school students and the mobilization of firefighters' unions, the movements of discontent are multiplying, as are the tense face-to-face confrontations with the police, the images of which have punctuated the news at the beginning of autumn. On social networks, many publications, very noted, call for a great convergence of movements on October 17. This date was originally chosen by a handful of groups calling themselves “yellow vests”, while prices at the pump were close to record levels, against a backdrop of war in the Middle East. While the weekend of October 17 and 18 coincides with the start of the All Saints' Day holidays across the country, could the protest fever spread to public transport?
To date, only one strike notice has been officially filed in the sector. It comes from an air transport inter-union (Unsa PNC, SNPNC, SNGAF, SNPL and Unac) and dates from Monday September 21. The five unions are calling on all cabin crew to stop work from Saturday October 17 to Wednesday October 21. Their demands do not relate to the fuel crisis, but to the reform of combined employment and retirement, which must come into force on January 1, 2027. They consider it “punitive and unsuitable for the specificities of our professions”.
We are talking about a real “revolution”. It is said that "the day of glory has come." It is claimed that this is the great return of the yellow vests. And it is true that the context of this fall presents similarities with that of November 2018, starting with the discontent around fuel prices. But nothing says that the calls for a day of action on October 17 against the high cost of living, born on social networks, will turn like eight years ago into a concrete mobilization, in the streets, in squares and roundabouts, fluorescent jackets on the shoulders. “This appeal is at the moment still quite uncertain and a little nebulous. There is sometimes a big gap between a call on social networks and its actual follow-up,” says a police source.
October 17 has taken on a little more depth in recent days with the rallying to the cause of several historical figureheads of the yellow vests. Thus for Jérôme Rodrigues, an activist who lost an eye during a demonstration in 2019: “This date must be an opportunity to put everyday difficulties at the center of public debate, to make our demands heard and to show that we refuse to consider precariousness as inevitable,” he declared on Saturday evening on his social networks.
The CGT indicated on Tuesday that it supports the October 17 mobilizations which seek to bring together the demands of the yellow vests against the high cost of living and the anger of young people, but emphasizes that its presence will “also aim to prevent attempts at hijacking by the extreme right” of this day.
“The CGT lends its support to the mobilizations of October 17 relating to social demands for an increase in salaries and pensions, lower prices and the defense of a public service that meets needs,” wrote the CGT in a press release, at the end of a new day of mobilization of high school students that it also supported.
On Tuesday, the youth organizations present at the Parisian demonstration (High School Union, Student Union, Unef, Fage) called to join the yellow vest movement on Saturday, which must include declared demonstrations and blockades.
“Wherever the conditions are met, the militant forces of the CGT will be present with those who mobilize, high school and university students, employees, retirees,” continues the CGT. “Our presence also aims to prevent attempts by the far right to hijack this day of social struggle,” underlines the union.
A police officer was indicted for “aggravated violence” on Tuesday and placed under judicial supervision after a high school student was blinded in the eye at the end of September on the sidelines of high school demonstrations in Tours, the prosecution announced on Tuesday. The police officer is also prohibited from carrying and possessing a LBD (defense ball thrower). Another police officer is placed under the status of assisted witness, according to a press release from Tours public prosecutor Catherine Sorita-Minard.
On September 30, Maël, a 16-year-old high school student, was blinded in one eye after incidents that occurred during the blockade of an establishment in Tours. The family had announced that it was filing a complaint for “violence by a person holding public authority”. The Tours prosecutor, Catherine Sorita-Minard, indicated following medico-legal examinations that the injuries to the teenager's eye were “compatible with the impact of an LBD-type defense bullet”.
