Tear gas and burning barricades as French student protests turn violent

France's high schools have become battlegrounds. On Friday, riot police clashed with students across the country as protests over classroom conditions turned increasingly violent and spread nationwide from their start in the Paris region last week.

Tear gas clouded the streets of Strasbourg in the east. In Marseille, in the south, protesters aimed fireworks at police lines. In Rennes, in the west, rubbish bins were set ablaze. Roughly 400 high schools — about one in ten across France — were closed on Friday because of the unrest.

The numbers are striking. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said police had arrested around 5,000 people since Monday, most of them teenagers. A student union said protests disrupted 1,800 high schools. Unions called for teachers to strike.

The students' grievances are concrete: overcrowded classrooms, chronic teacher shortages, and crumbling buildings, which they blame on years of underinvestment. Rights groups have accused the police of heavy-handed tactics against minors, citing batons, tear gas, and non-lethal flash-ball guns.

President Emmanuel Macron's government is battling to contain the unrest while juggling a fiscal crisis. France's borrowing costs have surged to their highest in decades, the yield gap with Germany reaching its widest since the 2011 eurozone debt crisis. The government just submitted its 2027 budget, while far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen promises to cut spending by 25 billion euros a year.

France has a long tradition of settling political arguments in the street, and students have often been at the front of it. What makes this round different is the age of the protesters and the scale of the arrests. When the state is firing tear gas at fifteen-year-olds by the thousands, something structural is breaking, not just a school budget.