Summary:

French lycées, the country's upper secondary schools, were caught in a week of blockades and violence that on Thursday 1 October left 1,027 establishments affected; 222 of them were blockaded, with 1,949 arrests and 84 police officers and gendarmes injured, according to the Interior Ministry. After a crisis meeting, the office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the intelligence services judge the movement an organised manoeuvre by La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard-left party, and by ultra-left proxies it did not name.

Manuel Bompard, the party's coordinator, called the charge conspiracy thinking and said the movement was born of exasperation at conditions in the schools. The Union syndicale lycéenne, a lycée students' union, called blockade days for 29 September, 1 October and 6 October. Two of the party's deputies visited the first blockaded school, in Créteil, on 21 September. Mélenchon told activists in writing to place themselves between pupils and police. Bally Bagayoko, the party's mayor of Saint-Denis, told BFMTV that violence can at a given moment be legitimate, and has been referred to a prosecutor for alleged provocation to commit an offence.

Pupils at the gates cite missing teachers, classes of 32 to 35 and buildings that overheat in summer and hold no heat in winter. The union also wants changes to Parcoursup, the national platform that allocates university places. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said on Thursday evening that a little more than 400 lycées would stay closed on Friday, with remote teaching wherever damage or a blockade leaves a school unsafe.

Detailed Report

1. School Blockades Sweep France: 1,027 Schools Hit, 1,949 Arrests in a Single Day

Blockades and violence at French lycées — the country's upper secondary schools — spread this week from the Paris region to Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Nice, Le Mans, Nantes and Marseille. The first blockade dated by the education ministry was at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil on 18 September, over missing teachers, supervisors and aides for disabled pupils.

The count rose steeply through the week. Police made 164 arrests on Monday, with 12 officers injured. On Tuesday there were 440 arrests, mainly minors, about two-thirds of them placed in custody, 48 officers injured, and hydrochloric acid thrown at police seven times. On Wednesday the Interior Ministry counted 625 arrests, 356 schools affected and 83 officers and gendarmes injured.

Thursday brought the largest counts of the week. In figures carried by franceinfo, the Interior Ministry counted 1,027 lycées affected, with 222 blockades, 1,949 arrests and 84 police officers and gendarmes injured. The Guardian, citing the ministry, reported nearly 3,000 people detained since the protests began, 1,949 of them on Thursday. The Justice Ministry told franceinfo that 1,793 people had been placed in custody since Monday, and Education Minister Édouard Geffray told France 2 that 235 pupils and staff had been injured since Monday, 170 of them pupils.

The Île-de-France region alone reported more than 200 schools disrupted, about 50 of them scenes of violence or damage, with the cost already put above one million euros. The Union étudiante, a student union, counted about 30 university sites blocked and claimed about 640 lycées, a figure the authorities have not confirmed.

After a crisis meeting on Thursday, the office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the intelligence services judge the movement an organised manoeuvre by La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard-left party, and its ultra-left proxies, and that the week had turned into urban violence. Manuel Bompard, the party's coordinator, called the charge conspiracy thinking and said the movement was born of exasperation at conditions in the schools.

2. Blockades Turn to Violence: Fires, Assaults and Vandalism

Principal François Léveillé of Lycée Sud in Le Mans said that the group which arrived at his gate at 8 a.m. on 29 September was not made up of pupils the school knew. They smashed bus shelters and had, he said, no slogans, "just a will to break things." At the nearby Lycée Funay-Hélène-Boucher a bin was lit, a scaffolding foot was torn out, stones broke windows and youths climbed over parked cars. The Sarthe prefecture reported 14 arrests on Tuesday and 15 on Wednesday, and said it had seized projectiles, mortar rounds and Molotov cocktails. No school in the department was fully blocked on Wednesday.

Not every school that was hit had been called to blockade. In Wattrelos, beside Roubaix, a hooded person drove a car into the gates of the collège-lycée Émile Zola, a school that takes pupils from the lower and upper secondary years, shortly before 8 a.m. on 30 September and set the vehicle alight. BFMTV reported that the school was not among those called to blockade. Lille prosecutor Samuel Finielz opened an investigation for damage by a means dangerous to people.

Nice-Matin reported that at Lycée Jacques-Dolle in Antibes the same day a group arrived with firecrackers, mortars, deodorant and lighters, some dressed in black and masked. Bus shelters and road signs were smashed, vehicles of the CRS, the republican security companies that serve as France's riot police, were stoned, and bins were lit. Seven people were taken before a children's judge. At Grasse, 14 lycée students were arrested over three days for mortars, projectiles thrown at police and deliberate fires.

In the Isère department, ICI Isère reported violent clashes at Villefontaine on Thursday morning between police and hooded youths who had mixed with pupils of Lycée Léonard-de-Vinci. The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes prefect authorised surveillance drones after the gatherings and violence outside lycées. Radio France photographed a burning barricade near Lycée Mounier in Grenoble, and Marine Le Pen named Lyon and Grenoble among the cities where buses were stoned.

In Marseille, the Bouches-du-Rhône police prefecture counted 40 lycées affected, 18 fully blocked and more than 4,600 people at the gatherings. At Lycée Victor-Hugo, the local authority's account, carried by Reuters, was that a deputy principal and two other staff were splashed with petrol inadvertently as a student tried to throw fuel into a bin. At a Marseille school also named Saint-Exupéry, police said hundreds of young people surrounded a fire truck, forced the firefighters out and set the vehicle alight.

In Nantes, the Loire-Atlantique prefecture said "violent individuals" had come "to attach themselves to the lycée students in order to commit damage." Nine establishments were damaged and fires broke out at three, including Lycée Nelson Mandela, whose entrance hall was damaged after a lit bin spread. The school told families it should not reopen before the autumn break. Eighteen people were arrested in the department.

Staff were among the injured. Two principals were hurt, at Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Rouen and Lycée Elisa-Lemonnier in Petit-Quevilly, and a principal at Lycée Degrugillier in Auchel was injured in the ear by a firework.

Police conduct is also under examination. The IGPN, the national police inspectorate, opened three inquiries into alleged injuries from less-lethal launchers: a parents' representative hit in the legs at Sevran on 28 September; Eden L., 14, struck in the jaw at Lycée Château-d'Epluches in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône on 29 September, with several teeth broken; and a young person at Lycée Balzac in Tours on 30 September, filmed with a bloodied eye. The Defender of Rights, the national ombudsman, opened its own inquiry into the Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône case.

Two government descriptions of who stood at the gates are on the record. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez described people turning up hooded, with faces painted and projectiles, waiting for the police to arrive. Le Figaro, citing a government source, described three profiles at the schools: highly politicised young people at the front, a large body of lycée pupils, and disruptors from the housing estates using firework mortars and looting.

 

3. The Grievance Behind the Blockades: Staff, Classes and Buildings

At Lycée Paul-Éluard in Saint-Denis, a 17-year-old pupil told Reuters that the school had cockroaches and rats, no water in the prefabricated toilets and no toilet paper. Pupils speaking to AFP and Reuters named the same conditions across the country: missing teachers, classes of 32 to 35, school days running from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and buildings that overheat in summer and fail to hold heat in winter.

The Union syndicale lycéenne, the lycée students' union, demands the replacement of absent teachers, more staff, decent buildings and smaller classes, along with changes to Parcoursup, the national platform that allocates university places.

La France insoumise's parliamentary group has put a number on the shortage. Its education plan, published on 1 September, cited an education-ministry note of April 2026, which put the teaching hours lost for lack of teachers in 2024–25 at 15.4 million across public collèges, the lower secondary schools for pupils aged about 11 to 15, and lycées. That was 100,000 more than the year before.

 

4. Far-Left Union and Politicians Behind the Blockades

The blockades were called by the Union syndicale lycéenne. It presents itself as the main lycée union and claims about 3,500 members, against roughly two million lycée pupils. Its slogan is "one foot in the street, one foot in the institutions," and its founding charter, as reported by Valeurs Actuelles, defines it as antifascist, ecologist, feminist and collectivist.

It called a nationwide blockade for Tuesday 29 September and a second day, which it called act 2, for Thursday 1 October. Its current appeal, issued with the Union étudiante for 6 October, calls for blockades against "social and racist selection," against "antisocial and racist measures" and against austerity.

It is not the union's first blockade call. On 3 May 2024 it called lycée blockades "for Palestine," demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and French recognition of a Palestinian state. Its spokesman then, Gwenn Thomas-Alves, is now a parliamentary assistant to Louis Boyard, a deputy of La France insoumise.

Its spokesman now is Ryad Rani, 18, from Wattrelos, who has just passed the baccalauréat, France's school-leaving examination. L'Opinion reported that in March 2026 he stood third on a municipal list in Wattrelos that the prefecture — the state's local authority in each department — labelled La France insoumise, and that in 2022 he interned in the office of the party's deputy David Guiraud. He appeared at the Amfis, the party's summer university, with Boyard and with Sabrine Kharbach of the Union étudiante. He told franceinfo the mobilisation was "by lycée students, for lycée students," and that he saw no instrumentalisation. He told RTL he had joined the municipal list because he would not stand by while his town fell to the far right.

The party's deputies were at the first blockaded school within days. Boyard and Clémence Guetté visited Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil on 21 September, after the blockade had begun, and Boyard's post about the visit was viewed about 520,000 times. On 25 September the education minister wrote that deputies of the party had been encouraging young people to block lycées since the Wednesday. Le Figaro, citing the prime minister's office, reported that about twenty national office-holders of the party were involved on 29 September, from Lille to Rennes and Toulouse.

Mélenchon, the party's founder and its candidate for the 2027 presidential election, put the instruction in writing. On 28 September he wrote:

"This ferocity is irresponsible, with an obvious racist aftertaste. Insoumis elected officials and activists, place yourselves in between wherever you can."

On 29 September he wrote:

"We, the Insoumis, are proud to be at the gates of the lycées to defend our children from police savagery. Parents, activists, mobilise to place yourselves in between."

Bally Bagayoko, the party's mayor of Saint-Denis, elected on 15 March 2026 with 50.77% in the first round, went to the Paul-Éluard and Bartholdi lycées on 28 and 29 September. Clips show him smiling and dancing beside pupils chanting his name. He told BFMTV: "Violence, at a given moment, can be legitimate. But every time we can avoid it, it is better."

A short clip placed Bagayoko beside a burning bin. Longer sequences published by Libération and L'Humanité show him pulling an already burning bin away from the gate. He denied lighting it: "Contrary to the accusations circulating, I obviously neither lit nor encouraged a bin fire," adding that "violence is not our method of action." The Paris police prefect referred him to the Bobigny prosecutor for alleged provocation to commit an offence, and he is the only elected official so far referred over these protests.

In the National Assembly on Thursday, Boyard said: "There is not one leaflet, not one speech, not one call anywhere from the slightest Insoumis to set a lycée in motion." He traced the movement's origin to the Créteil lycée, which he said had been missing three baccalauréat teachers for several months and had no administrative staff to sign work-placement agreements, no deputy principal and overcrowded classes.

Three items on the record sit beside that sentence: Boyard's own visit to the school on 21 September, the education minister's written statement of 25 September that deputies of the party were encouraging the blockades, and Mélenchon's written instruction of 28 September to place activists between pupils and police.

Other student organisations backed the mobilisation from different positions. The Union étudiante, born of a 2019 split on the left of the student movement and described by Valeurs Actuelles as having historical links with Mélenchon's party, joined the calls. The Fédération des associations générales étudiantes, known as the Fage, is the largest federation of campus student associations and sits in the moderate centre. The Union nationale des étudiants de France, the Unef, is the historic national student union and sits on the left. According to franceinfo, all three called for demonstrations and blockades on Thursday.

The teachers' side came later. The Syndicat national des enseignements de second degré, the SNES-FSU, the main union for secondary-school teachers, told staff on 1 October to stand with the mobilised pupils and said police violence had to stop.

 

5. Ministers and the Right Blame Mélenchon’s Party for the School Blockades

The prime minister's office delivered its charge after Thursday's crisis meeting: the intelligence services judge the movement "an organised manoeuvre by La France insoumise and its ultra-left proxies," and the party and those proxies were "at the origin" of the blockades. The proxies were not named, and the assessment itself has not been published. A person close to the prime minister told Reuters that the agencies briefed the meeting that the wave was initiated by hard-left politicians.

Le Figaro said it had seen a Paris police intelligence note whose visible excerpt places the origins "evidently" in the instrumentalisation of student-union structures and political movements close to the far left.

Bompard told AFP: "I call on the government not to sink into conspiracy thinking and the infantilisation of lycée students. This spontaneous movement was born of exasperation at absolutely unworthy educational conditions." It was time, he said, that the prime minister gave up "the strategy of letting the situation rot, and of provocation."

Lecornu had put the accusation in personal terms earlier in the week. He accused the party of an "irresponsible escalation," said that "exploiting their anger for partisan purposes is a fault," and rejected the charge of racism as an insult. His office said on Thursday that the upsurge in violence had made it virtually impossible to maintain the continuity of public education.

Geffray drew the government's distinction on RTL the day before the crisis meeting: the demands are legitimate, the violence is not, and what worried him was that people were "encouraging the idea that democracy need not be respected and that violent action is required." He said principals had been assaulted and teachers chased by thugs. On Thursday evening he told France 2: "The lycée movement has been taken hostage by ultra-violent groups."

Nuñez said on BFMTV on 29 September: "Violence is never legitimate. Nothing justifies violence. Nothing justifies turning up in front of schools hooded, face painted, with projectiles, and waiting for the police to arrive in order to take them on." He called the participation of the party's elected officials irresponsible and said some actions looked much more like urban violence.

President Emmanuel Macron, speaking in Madrid on 30 September beside Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, aimed the point at the politicians: "None of these fears legitimises violence. And in no case should political leaders legitimise violence squared." He added: "We have seen many leaders go to the lycées to excite the students. I think that is serious."

Marine Le Pen, of the National Rally, said Mélenchon bore a heavy responsibility for going to the lycées, calling on activists and sending deputies to the schools. "This is no longer a matter of lycée protests. These are riots organised by professionals and supervised by deputies of La France insoumise," she said, and she called for a new anti-rioter law. Jordan Bardella, of the same party, said: "This is where Jean-Luc Mélenchon's supposed revolution leads: fires and violence." Bruno Retailleau, of Les Républicains, raised the banning of La France insoumise and called the week a dress rehearsal for the 2027 presidential election.

 

6. The State Closes Schools; the Union Calls the Next Blockade

Geffray has asked that courses be taught remotely wherever damage or a blockade prevents pupils from being received safely, decided case by case by heads in liaison with the academic authorities. On France 2 on Thursday evening he said a little more than 400 schools would remain closed on Friday. "Violence will not deprive our pupils of their fundamental right to instruction," he said.

On Friday he is due to receive lycée organisations, the representative staff unions, parents' associations and elected members of the Conseil national de la vie lycéenne, the national council of lycée student life. Those meetings are announced, not yet held. On Thursday he met five final-year pupils elected to the Versailles academic council.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin convened the country's 36 chief prosecutors by video and asked for "great firmness in the criminal response toward the authors of these unacceptable acts." At Beauvais, prosecutor Nicolas Septe listed the offences as taking part in an unlawful gathering, violence against persons holding public authority, and damage. Gatherings have been banned in Creil and Nogent-sur-Oise for Friday.

The Union syndicale lycéenne and the Union étudiante have already called the next blockade day for 6 October.

Conclusion

A blockade at one school in Créteil over missing teachers had reached 1,027 lycées by Thursday, with 1,949 arrests that day. The government's position is that the movement was an organised manoeuvre by La France insoumise and its ultra-left proxies. The party's position is that it was a spontaneous protest against conditions in the schools. The union has already called the next blockade day for 6 October.