What France's student protesters want – and what the government is offering
Mass protests across France's high schools roiled the country again on Tuesday, with hundreds of thousands joining the biggest day of the movement so far. Demonstrations began in late September, with the first protest traced back to Saint-Exupéry high school in Créteil, a southern Parisian suburb.
A handful of teachers at Saint-Exupéry went on strike September 17 to lament staff shortages. “We were short a maths teacher, a French teacher, a literature professer, a history teacher and an assistant professor. The school nurse was on sick leave,” Laurent Bessiere, a maths teacher, told French radio station France Inter.
That same evening, students gathered to join the fight and planned a protest for the next morning. Stacking a few bins in front of the school entrance and holding placards, they rose up to make demands alongside their teachers.
“We're asking for the bare minimum,” a student told France Inter.
Their demands struck a chord with other high schools across the nation, which are suffering from a lack of funding and understaffing.
In response to the protests, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has ordered his ministers to tackle their demands and send in proposals by the end of the month. But finding spare funds to implement educational reforms will be complicated, given heated debates over France's already strained 2027 budget.
Read more 'We're fed up': Paris students rise up in a movement that shows no sign of slowing
Staff shortages
A union of high school and university students on Monday published a list of 10 “emergency measures” they say could serve as a basis for working with the government, whose response so far has been “repression”, they write.
High on the list is the issue of staff shortages. Students are demanding a large-scale recruitment drive to create additional teaching posts so that each classroom has a person to lead it. They also want to ensure that every establishment has at least one nurse, a psychologist and a career adviser for every 500 students.
More than half of France's middle and high schools lack at least one teacher, a major trade union representing public school staff found. And 69 percent of schools are short of at least one member of their teaching and support staff. Understaffing means classrooms are overcrowded, regularly packing in 35 students at a time.
Read more Why so many French teachers are calling it quits
The numbers do not reflect the optimism that French Education Minister Édouard Geffray expressed before the September start of the new academic year. Speaking on France Inter at the end of August, he insisted that teacher shortages would be “minimal” and that “all indicators” were that things were on track to be “much better” than in previous years.
To meet the demand for teacher replacements, Lecornu referred to a scheme from 2023 encouraging teachers to cover for the short absences of colleagues in a statement published Sunday. As for long-term absences or unfilled posts, Lecornu said he ordered his ministers to prioritise filling them in every regional education authority.
Run-down buildings
Students have also repeatedly sounded the alarm on the dire state of their school buildings. A wave of viral Instagram videos posted by students resurfaced when the protests began. “I'm a student at the Blaise Cendrars high school in Seine-Saint-Denis (a northern suburb of Paris). Of course, I don't have a roof over my head when I'm in class,” one student ironically said in a video showcasing the deplorable state of her establishment. Others have reported seeing rats and cockroaches scurrying through school corridors and flooded toilets.
Speaking to French radio ICI on Wednesday, vice president of the Île-de-France region James Chéron rejected the criticism. He said the region's €6.6 billion, 10-year plan covers almost every public high school and that nearly 400 of its 468 establishments are already new or renovated, with the rest either under works or “being studied”. Chéron added that Seine-Saint-Denis has received the “most investment”.
But students are not convinced. During the successive heatwaves that scorched parts of France this summer, some classrooms reached 38° celsius. Two-thirds of the country's elementary, middle and high schools have been built before 1970 and cannot withstand rising temperatures brought on by climate change.
Read more New timetables, longer holidays: How can French schools adapt to heatwaves?
The maintenance of school and university buildings is number one on the list of demands published by the student union. They are asking that an “emergency plan” be implemented to renovate dilapidated buildings and adapt them to heatwaves by installing air conditioners or cooling systems. They also want the buildings to be well-insulated to face cold spells. Providing “clean and functional toilets” is a key tenet of the request.
On this point, Lecornu said in his statement that the upkeep of public high school buildings, equipment and canteens is the responsibility of regional councils, but that the state would “support” them. Ministers are tasked with setting a timetable on urgent needs and clarify who is responsible for what.
“Studying in run-down premises is an obstacle to education,” Lecornu acknowledged.
Long hours
Timetables have also come under scrutiny. Students say school days are too long, sometimes running from 8am to 6pm due to gaps in their schedule where they don't have class. They point to a reform adopted in 2019 that allows high school students to choose specialisation courses in their final years as one of the reasons timetables can be disrupted.
“When I was in high school I would start at 8am and finish at 6pm,” recalled Julie, who is now in university. “My schedule was packed, and I still had extracurricular activities on the side.”
“I wake up at 6am because I live far from my high school. It takes me one hour to get home and then I have a tonne of homework to do. I barely spend time with my family,” one student told France 2 in an interview on Sunday.
Though French students tend to spend fewer days in school than the OECD average, they make up for that with longer school days. Protesters march during a demonstration by French high school and university students in Marseille on October 6, 2026.
Lecornu has asked for improvements to timetables and independent study conditions to be reviewed with public school staff, student representatives and even local transport authorities. He encouraged them to use artificial intelligence to refine the software used to build timetables ahead of the next school year.
A citizen's convention submitted a proposal to the government in November last year on how to reform public school timetables, but the proposal has so far gone unheeded.
Issues with the Parcoursup platform
France's national online platform for applying to higher education institutions, Parcoursup, is also in the firing line. A bit like UCAS in the UK, final-year high school students use it to apply to university courses and other programmes, receiving offers based on their school records and applications.
Students argue that the system is opaque and seems arbitrary. Each university course ranks applicants with its own local algorithm and criteria, and students say they cannot see how decisions are made or why they were turned down. Many suspect their applications, including cover letters they spend hours writing, are never really read.
“I wrote about a dozen cover letters without using ChatGPT, but I feel like my applications were not even looked at. When I see people accepted onto the course I wanted with lower grades than mine, it seems completely illogical to me,” Ghjulia told FRANCE 24. The 18-year-old was hoping to start medical school but none of her applications were accepted, despite having solid grades.
But students also say Parcoursup entrenches inequality. A February 2026 report concluded that it helps keep sociocultural inequalities in place. One reason is that courses can see which high school an applicant attended, which can disadvantage students from less prestigious schools or poorer areas. The report drew out 51 proposals to address these issues, including dropping cover letters, hiding the applicant's school and sharing local algorithms.
Lecornu is promising to make Parcoursup more transparent. Under his plan, students would be told exactly how courses weigh their grades and specialised subjects, how applicants are ranked, and why they were accepted or rejected. Ministers Édouard Geffray and Philippe Baptiste have until the end of October to propose changes for the 2027 admissions round, which opens in January.
The other demands listed by students include financial help, including guaranteeing that students meals are capped at €1, and ending the police violence that has run rampant during the protests.