Listen to this articleDear 2 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. Some 400 schools in France are expected to remain closed on Friday after student protests over education-related grievances turned violent in some places. Protests against teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings broke out in the Paris region last month but have become increasingly violent as they spread across the country, with dozens injured and police making hundreds of arrests. The demonstrations and blockades have become a point of political tension at a delicate time for the government, which announced a series of spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday. “There is an active and violent minority… We are not entirely sure that they are high school students,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL radio on Friday, adding that 2,000 people have been arrested since the protests began, with around 2,000 people arrested. “We have gone from demonstrations by high school students to disruption of public order. When people attack buses and burn down schools, it is no longer simply a matter of protest,” he said. In an interview with broadcaster France 2 on Thursday afternoon, French Education Minister Édouard Geffray said that “just over 400 schools and other educational establishments” would remain closed on Friday. regional educational authority, in Bordeaux, France, on Friday. (Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images) Some of the worst unrest on Thursday occurred in Marseille, France’s second-largest city. At Victor Hugo High School, two teachers were inadvertently splashed when a student tried to pour gasoline into a trash container. Previously, the prosecution had claimed that the teachers had been attacked. In front of the Saint-Exupéry institute in Marseille, hundreds of young people forced firefighters to flee their truck and then set it on fire. The city’s public transport was suspended after staff members were injured in the riots. A school was burned down in the western city of Nantes, firefighters said, and the façade of another was damaged by fire in Le Havre, in the north. In the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, crowds of young people gathered in front of a police line. One student held up a sign that said, “Can we explain ourselves without being tear-gassed?” Geffray said he would meet representatives from staff unions, parents’ associations and student associations on Friday.
