The Albany Gazette - Clashes between French teens, police as school blockades intensify

The movement in the lycees, which handle the final years of school in France, has angered the government.

Since last week, high school students have staged protests outside their schools over grievances including timetables, class sizes and a shortage of teachers as well as overheated classrooms during the recent heatwaves.

The protests started in the Ile-de-France region around Paris but have now spread to other cities nationwide.

According to the education ministry, 338 schools have been affected by protests or disruptions since the start of the day, with 40 blockaded and 44 facing attempted blockades.

There were 40 arrests on Tuesday and 10 people -- students and staff -- were wounded.

In one lycee in the Paris suburbs, teachers formed a line around protesting students in a bid to protect them from the police.

Masked pupils gathered outside the Lycee Cesar Baggio in Lille, in northern France, setting bins on fire, an AFP photographer reported.

Bus shelters and advertising billboards were vandalised, with bottles, paving stones and various objects hurled at police, who responded by firing tear gas.

In the western city of Nantes, teens piled up dozens of bins to prevent entrance to the Lycee Gabriel Guist'hau, while in Paris there was an uneasy standoff between 30 students and a contingent of police at the Arago school.

Similar clashes were also reported in cities including Marseille in the south, Bordeaux in the west and Lyon in the southeast.

- 'Children of the suburbs' -

Around 80 students gathered outside the Lamartine school in Paris, brandishing slogans including "More hours of lessons than sleep" and "8:00 am to 6:00 pm: are we pupils or under arrest?"

There were tense scenes at the Lycee Brequigny in the northwestern city of Rennes -- Brittany's largest high school -- where around a hundred students hurled projectiles at the building, an AFP video journalist said.

The actions came as unions planned a day of nationwide demonstrations and strikes over the budget of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron.

Union marches were taking place in Paris and other cities, with around one-in-10 teachers striking nationwide and thousands of members of the fire services staging an angry protest in Paris. Public transport was not badly affected however.

"The anger is immense. I warn the government -- it must address the demands and revise the draft budget, which is dangerous for the country and is driving us straight into the wall of recession at 200 kilometres an hour," the head of the CGT union Sophie Binet told BFM TV.

Lecornu said on Monday any escalation of demonstrations at high schools would be "irresponsible" and lashed out at the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, who he accused of encouraging the protests.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said 164 arrests took place on Monday and 180 schools were affected, adding: "We cannot tolerate excesses."

In the low-income Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the district's LFI mayor Bally Bagayoko joined a protest of hundreds of students at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.

Leading students in a rendition of the national hymn, the Marseillaise, he described the protests as "completely legitimate" and complained that low-income areas received less resources than higher-income ones.

When a crowd formed, police with anti-riot shields struck the students and an AFP journalist with batons.

"We, the children of the suburbs, are abandoned and neglected," said 16-year-old Victoire, a student at the school, denouncing conditions at the establishment as "unsanitary".

"Sometimes, violence can be legitimate," Bagayoko, who denied accusations he had set fire to a bin at the school, told BFM TV on Tuesday. "But whenever it can be avoided, it is better," he added.

(R.White--TAG)