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High school students torch at least two schools as high school protests rage across France

Interior minister ⁠Laurent Nunez said that, in some places, troublemakers were moving from school to school to incite violence

EUalive with agencies October 1, 2026 19:29

High school student protesters started fires in at least two ​French schools on Thursday, while teachers were inadvertently splashed with petrol at a third, officials said, ‌amid increasingly violent clashes over staff shortages and dilapidated buildings.

At Marseille’s Victor Hugo high school, the teachers were inadvertently splashed as a student attempted to throw gasoline into a trash bin, local authorities said. Earlier the prosecutor’s office had said the teachers had been ​assaulted and “doused in petrol”.

At another school in the city, Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people surrounded ​a fire truck that had arrived to put out a blaze in the morning, ⁠police said. The attackers forced the firefighters to flee the vehicle, then set it alight.

Another blaze hit a school ​in the western city of Nantes, fire crews said.

French education minister Edouard Geffray said on Thursday evening that he ​would successively meet representative staff unions, parent associations and student associations on Friday.

PM holds crisis meeting

The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced a series of deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 ​budget on Thursday.

French high school protests escalate into nationwide clashes

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office held a crisis meeting on Thursday afternoon on the protests, which ​have left dozens of people injured. Hundreds have also been arrested, most of them teenagers, officials have said.

In the Parisian suburb of ‌Saint-Denis, ⁠crowds of young people massed in front of a line of police. One student held up a sign that read: “Can we explain ourselves without being teargassed?”

Students have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics, including the use of teargas. The government has criticised the violence that has broken out during some of the protests, but has said difficulties ​in high schools should be ​acknowledged and addressed.

Interior minister ⁠Laurent Nunez said that, in some places, troublemakers were moving from school to school to incite violence.

Geffray called for schools to hold classes remotely if protesters were blocking their premises.

“Violence ​will not keep our students from their fundamental right to an education,” he said ​in a post ⁠on social media platform X.

In Nantes, Olivier Chateau, a deputy to the mayor, told broadcaster franceinfo that the fire at Nelson Mandela high school was under control and that there had been no injuries.

People in the building had been evacuated, ⁠while students ​due to arrive at the school were turned away, he said. ​The mayor’s office declined to comment further.

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, posted about a violent incident in Paris’s 20th arrondissement where a young female police lieutenant was chased, tripped, and kicked by multiple individuals during a public order operation on avenue Gambetta, with attackers heard shouting “Wallah, tuez-la!”.

The officer was lightly injured but in shock after becoming isolated; videos of the pursuit circulated widely on social media, prompting outrage from police unions and right-wing figures.

Bardella, frames the attack as evidence of France’s decline due to lax policies and mass immigration, urging a stronger national response to such urban violence.

Marine Le Pen, favourite as candidate for president, blamed ten years of Emmanuel Macron’s leadership for turning France into a country with endemic insecurity, accusing the government of state weakness and failure to protect citizens amid rising violence.

In a post on X she quotes recent Ministry of the Interior data showing major increases since 2017, including +204% in rapes and attempts, +120% in intrafamily physical violence, +110% in non-rape sexual violence, and +84% in attempted homicides.

Le Pen positions her National Rally party as committed to restoring public authority without hesitation to counter the “spiral of violence” and end disorder.

The hard-left candidate in the presidential elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, voiced alarm over police violence during student protests, noting a youth blinded in one eye and urging empathy as parents, while repeatedly affirming La France Insoumise’s commitment to non-violent struggle methods.

Mélenchon criticized the government’s strategy of blaming opponents as a misstep that has fuelled the spread of mobilization rather than resolving underlying school infrastructure issues.

Mélenchon’s party is widely criticised for encouraging the protests. Renaissance, the party of Gabriel Attal, one of the centrist candidates for President, labeled Mélenchon “Pyromane de la République”.

With Reuters, with addtitional reporting by EUalive

Caption: High school students protest against education conditions in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, France, 01 October 2026. EPA/Firas Abdullah

Updated: October 1, 2026 - 19:59

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