France to shutter up to 500 schools as more student protests called

France plans to fully or partially close up to 500 schools on Monday amid a series of student protests that have become increasingly violent.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray announced the precautionary measures on Sunday as part of a bid for a “partial, progressive return to lessons”. However, after a weekend lull, student protestors announced they plan to resume demonstrations – launched last month over complaints regarding class sizes, lack of teachers, and other complaints – early in the week.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the minister said. He added that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the protests.

Geffray said the closures were a security precaution. Protest organisers have called for a return to large-scale demonstrations on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

At least 170 students and 78 educational personnel have been injured since the student demos first erupted in the Paris region in mid-September, according to Geffray.

The Ministry of National Education reported that at least 400 of the 3,700 high schools in France were closed on Friday, while 560 faced protests or disruptions.

The number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday, Geffray said.

Teachers and students first mobilised at a high school in a Paris suburb on 17 September over a lack of teaching staff, excessive school-day hours and other grievances. The protests have since spread nationwide, resulting in class strikes, blockades and demonstrations.

According to the interior minister, more than 5,000 people have been arrested in the last week; 85 percent of them minors.

Critics have criticised “disproportionate” police violence in response to the demonstrations. Rights group Amnesty International said the student protestors “must be listened to, not repressed”.

In an interview on French public radio, Geffray claimed far-left activists “infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves and engaged in extreme violence.”