French school protests cost exam pupils up to 150 class hours

French school protests entered an eighth week on Nov. 15, with thousands of pupils facing baccalauréat exams missing up to 150 hours of teaching, the Guardian reported in an article.

The disruption has widened from a dispute over school conditions into a management crisis, with more than 360 schoolchildren and 245 staff injured since the protests began, according to the Guardian article.

Students have blocked hundreds of high schools since September, using wheelie bins and other barricades to press demands over dilapidated buildings, replacement teachers, crowded classes and the university application system. In some places, schools have shut regularly on security grounds.

The baccalauréat is France’s main school-leaving exam and university entry qualification. The lost classroom time is particularly acute in the Paris region and in cities including Toulouse, the Guardian reported.

Alex, 16, told the Guardian he has been waking at 4 a.m. and walking 90 minutes from a northern Paris suburb to help blockade his high school in Vincennes. “How else can we make ourselves heard?

We can’t stop now. It’s the only way the government will listen,” he said.

The protests drew students, teachers and other education staff to a national mobilisation in Paris on Tuesday. The Guardian reported that several thousand people marched between the Panthéon and Place d’Italie.

The government first responded with riot police outside schools across France, the Guardian reported. It later argued that an offer to cut some class sizes and review the university application platform showed the movement was nearing an end.

Teachers’ unions have accused the government of allowing the dispute to deteriorate into a more dangerous environment. The Guardian reported fireworks being fired outside schools and inside classrooms, and said a local councillor outside Paris was hit in the chest by a bottle of gasoline while trying to mediate outside a school.

The government and teachers’ unions have said people committing violence inside or outside schools were not the same as students demonstrating peacefully for education rights. High school principals held their own demonstrations on Friday, saying they were struggling with disorder and uncertainty.

At least 50 principals have requested to leave their posts, the Guardian reported. One education trade unionist told the newspaper a school principal had bought a bulletproof vest for protection.

Julien Roy, a history and geography teacher at Lycée Balzac in Tours and a representative of the SNALC education union in Indre-et-Loire, said the situation required a reduction in violence and a route back to teaching. “There is a crisis of trust. We need a de-escalation of violence and a path back to education,” he said.

Roy said 10 colleagues were on sick leave at his school, including the principal and deputy principal. He linked the strain to continuing tension after a 16-year-old pupil from another school allegedly lost the use of an eye outside Lycée Balzac after being struck by a police rubber bullet.

“We need to get back to class to teach our pupils again, some of whom are booing us,” Roy said. “We’ll have to sit down and talk about this, honestly and calmly, to get it out of everyone’s system so we can restore trust.”

Online lessons have rarely replaced missed classes in full, the Guardian reported. Some parents have begun going to schools early to try to stop barricades themselves, sometimes creating further confrontations.