Tear gas outside the lycée: 250,000 march as France's school crisis turns violent

Police fired tear gas outside high schools in France on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents joined the largest day yet of a nationwide school protest movement, with demonstrations reported in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Rennes and other cities.

The movement began in September at a school in the Paris suburbs over unfilled teaching posts and has since widened into a broader complaint about teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, long school days and deteriorating buildings. Protesters in Marseille and Nantes carried signs accusing the state of abandoning public education, while parents in Toulouse linked arms at the front of a march.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu told lawmakers that hundreds of pupils, school staff and police officers had been injured since the unrest began, describing the toll as the heaviest the school system had paid in decades. A teenager was seriously injured on Monday after an incident involving a crowd-dispersal grenade; the exact circumstances remain disputed.

The government faces competing pressures. Meeting the demands for more teachers and repairs requires spending at a time when ministers are trying to pass a budget and contain public debt. Ignoring them risks further blockades: more than a hundred schools have reported damage since the protests started, and thousands of arrests have been made, most of them minors.

President Emmanuel Macron convened senior ministers for an emergency discussion as the protests grew. Opposition and union voices have criticised the police response, including the use of tear gas and batons against school pupils, while ministers have blamed agitators for violence at the edges of marches.

Whether the next step is negotiation or another week of blockades, the dispute has already become a test of whether a fiscally constrained government can keep a basic public service staffed.