High school mobilization: violence against educational staff reported in Gironde and Essonne

The principal of a high school in Lormont, near Bordeaux, filed a complaint after being pushed to the ground by a student during an attempt to block the establishment.

Several incidents of violence occurred on Tuesday, November 3, near high schools in the Bordeaux metropolitan area, on the sidelines of high school protests. The principal of the Iris high school in Lormont, an establishment partly ransacked by around thirty young people at the beginning of October, filed a complaint after being pushed to the ground by a student during an attempt to block the establishment. An “unacceptable physical attack” for the prefect of Gironde and the rector of the Bordeaux academy, who denounced other violence around high schools in Bordeaux, Bègles, Mérignac, Pessac and Talence, on the sidelines of the high school protests. In Essonne, school heads were targeted by mortar fire in two high schools in the department, in Quincy-sous-Sénart and Corbeil-Essonnes.

“Since the start of the high school movement, 207 National Education personnel have been injured. There have been 37 more in the last 48 hours. I condemn this violence with the greatest firmness,” wrote the Minister of National Education, Edouard Geffray, on X.

The Interfac Île-de-France collective called on students and high school students to gather on Tuesday at the Jussieu faculty, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. He had planned to demonstrate between the Pantheon and the Medef headquarters, but was met with a banning order from the prefecture, which offered him a route to the outskirts. A decision that the collective challenged in court but its request was rejected by the administrative court.

This is a little less than a third of the 184 higher education establishments spread across the territory, the Ministry of Higher Education announced to the press. The Student Union, for its part, reported in a press release “one in two universities disrupted” and “more than 50 campuses blocked”.

According to the Ministry of National Education, 48 high schools were blocked on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., compared to 41 at the same time the day before, which still represents a little more than 1% of the territory's establishments. For its part, the High School Union (USL) denounced “an absurd figure”, estimating to France Culture that “more than 500 high schools” were affected this morning by a “total or filtering blockage”.

The inter-union takes legal action on the Paris route on Thursday. She is attacking the police headquarters in summary proceedings to obtain the publication and suspension of a potential order banning demonstrations on Thursday in Paris between the Bastille and Concorde squares.