Up to 500 French high schools to close Monday as pupil protests intensify, minister says

Up to 500 high schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Monday 5 October amid the nationwide pupil protest movement that has shaken the country, Education Minister Édouard Geffray announced on Sunday, according to AFP via The Straits Times.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some 400–500 high schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, Geffray said, adding that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

The Monday figure is comparable to Friday, when about 400 high schools closed, though Geffray vowed a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.

The minister said 78 education staff members had been wounded — “something we have never seen before”, he claimed, Le Parisien reporting cited by the minister. Over 5,000 people, 85 per cent of them minors, have been arrested since the movement began, while Reuters reports more than 600 police officers have also been injured.

Pupils at French lycées say their studies are being ruined by high teacher absences, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities; the movement began at a Paris school on 17 September. Geffray claimed far-left activists had infiltrated the movement — a characterisation his critics dispute. Organisers have called for protests to continue on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.

Flip News context: this follows Friday’s closures of roughly 400 schools, covered by Flip News on 2 October.

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