The pictures that show the scale of France’s student protests ...Middle East

France’s government has held a crisis meeting, briefed by intelligence agencies, as a wave of student protests continues to spread across the country.

At least two schools were set ablaze, students barricaded others, and police made almost 2,000 arrests on Thursday as some demonstrations turned violent. More than 160 schools were closed, and around 400 will be closed on Friday.

The protests began in the outskirts of Paris, to draw attention to teacher shortages and run-down school facilities.

However they have quickly gone national, as the government announced a suite of cuts to spending in an attempt to rein in the budget deficit.

Why are students protesting?

Temperatures started to rise in the June heatwaves as students at French lycees, the institutions for the last three years of secondary education, boiled over at poorly insulated, un-air-conditioned and overcrowded classrooms.

The summer break did nothing to cool tempers. Shortly after school returned, on September 17, some of the teachers at the Saint-Exupery lycee in Creteil, in the banlieus south-east of Paris, went on strike to protest against staffing problems.

One teacher told Radio France “There was a lack of a math teacher, a French teacher, a history and literature teacher, an assistant teacher, the nurse being on sick leave, and a half-time social worker position was missing”.

The next day a handful of final year students set up a protest, using rubbish bins and fences. One told the media “we’re not asking for luxury, we’re just asking for the bare minimum”.

The following Monday, another blockade was staged and local MPs from the left-wing LFI party lent their support.

The students put their blockade, their slogans and chants, up on TikTok. It was seized on by students at other high schools. One Creteil student told the media: “It took on a disconcerting scale; I wasn’t expecting it”.

These new protesters, too, denounced the recurring absence of teachers (“without classes, we won’t pass”, one senior told Radio France) as well as overcrowded classrooms, outdated equipment and deteriorating buildings. Another student explained: “the ceiling leaks and the hallways are mouldy, some tables have holes and some walls are crumbling … it’s 42 degrees Celsius in the summer and minus 24 in the winter, it’s horrible, unbearable, we can’t work”.

They were exasperated with right-wing, culture war politics, which they said obsessed over “abayas and phone use” instead of fixing the education system. “They’re leaving us with a polluted future,” summarised one student.

How far has it spread?

At the beginning of this week, anticipating days of spreading protests, Interior minister Laurent Nunez instructed the police and army to “strengthen the security of schools”, adding that “violent actions cannot be tolerated”. Instead of calming the situation, it fanned the flames.

On Tuesday several high schools in Vienne and Deux-Sevres in western France were blockaded, including the Victor Hugo high school in Poitiers where students lit cardboard fires.

“We’re inspired by May ’68,” one told Radio France, in reference to the huge, historic student protests of 1968.

Student union leaders called on trade unions and other left-wing organisations to join the protests, and the union offered on its website a “tutorial on how to blockade your high school or university, as well as a mobilisation kit”. A major day of protest is planned for next Tuesday.

By Thursday, more than 350 lycees were blockaded across France. The protests also spread to university campuses, where students are angry about new higher fees.

There have been protests, some of which turned violent, in towns including Lyon, Nantes, Marseilles, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Lille.

More than a hundred police have reportedly been injured in the protests. On Thursday several school headmasters were personally attacked, including one hit by a lit firework, BFM TV reported. In Marseille, several senior teaching staff were sprayed with petrol.

What does the government say?

On Wednesday the president, Emmanuel Macron, appealed for calm. “I hear and understand the anxieties and anger that our youth may have,” he said at a press conference. “However none of these debates, none of these fears legitimises violence.”

Nunez has show increasing anger over the protests.

On Thursday he picked out an incident in Marseille where, he said, “rioters targeted a firefighters’ vehicle”, smashed its windows and set it on fire. This “act of gratuitous and serious violence is unacceptable”, he said.

Education minister Edouard Geffray told France 2 that “the high school movement is being held hostage by ultra-violent groups”, and the prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu accused far-left political parties, and potential presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, of stirring up the protests.

On Thursday Geffray and Nunez put out a joint statement criticising “a climate of unacceptable violence”.

They said the protesters “show widespread use of firework mortars, various projectiles and incendiary devices, and the presence of masked individuals intent on attacking the police, which also endangers the high school students who are protesting peacefully”.

While they asked police to use “strictly proportionate” force against minors who were protesting, and to “allow demands to be expressed freely as long as this is done peacefully”, they ordered security forces to break blockades to “keep schools operating”, and to “restore order”.

A history of protests

French students, of course, are famous for their protests.

The most iconic was May ’68, a heartfelt progressive revolt by an antiauthoritarian generation against the stuffy, bourgeois society under Charles de Gaulle.

It began with a minor protest at the University of Paris, by students who wanted to visit each other’s dormitories. A series of provocations and crackdowns escalated into iconic scenes of riot and repression, culminating in the Night of the Barricades, a general strike and a snap election.

In 1986, students again rose up in hundreds and thousands in protests which more closely resemble the current ones. As Time reported, university “enrollment has boomed, equipment and funds are scarce, classes overcrowded” and students were deeply opposed to Chirac’s proposed reforms to admissions, diplomas and fees.

The strike movement closed most universities and lycees for three weeks, ending in a violent confrontation between protesters and the police in front of the Invalides, and the death of a young student, Malik Oussekine, from police brutality.

And almost a million union members and students combined to take to the streets in 2006 to protest against a new labour law.

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