With the end of the two-week autumn holiday in France, high school students restarted their protests by closing the entrances of some schools this morning, despite the concession package announced by the government during the holiday period.
The student movement, which broke out in September in the suburbs of Paris against inadequate education conditions and inequality, and over time turned into mass demonstrations with the participation of unions, combined with reactions to the cost of living, took to the streets again in cities such as Paris, Marseille and Rennes after the holiday.
The school closure initiatives, which came right after the cost of living protests held for the third consecutive weekend with the participation of hundreds of thousands of people across the country, remained within a narrower framework compared to previous weeks.
16-year-old Meriem, one of the activists who barricaded the door of a high school in the southern French city of Marseille by piling up garbage containers, told the AFP agency, "We restarted the protest because we were given some answers, but these answers are definitely not enough." he said.
Students demand the renovation of physically worn and outdated schools, an increase in teacher positions, an upper limit on the number of students in classes, an increase in university quotas, and the abolition of the higher education transition system, which they find socially unfair.
Last week, French Minister of Education Edouard Geffray proposed limiting classes to a maximum of 28 students, allocating 4 billion euros for school renovations, opening 15 thousand new quotas in higher education and introducing a new university admission mechanism by 2028.
Student representatives, on the other hand, found this package of measures offered by the government insufficient and decided to continue the protests.
According to the Reuters agency, Minister Geffray told France Inter radio this morning that only a very small portion of the more than 3,700 high schools across France were closed.
Stating that school closure cases mostly occurred in the Paris region and the northern and southern parts of the country, Geffray said, "If we look at school closures, or more accurately, closure attempts, the phenomenon remained at a very marginal level; we are talking about only a handful of units, a few individual schools." he said.
Geffray said that the right to protest is legal, but blocking access to schools is against the law, and called on students to return to classes to avoid losing exams.
Referring to the situation of the students who will take the high school graduation exam at the end of the year, Minister Geffray said, "I have students who will take the exam at the end of the year, and hundreds of thousands of these young people have not attended classes for four or five weeks." he said.
In the images reflected on television broadcasts, it was seen that police teams not wearing fully equipped riot police uniforms were taking security measures around the high schools where the closure attempts were made.
