France's government has failed students by neglecting schools and answering protest with police force, and the deeper problem is a political class that does not listen
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexander-hurst. "‘Nobody is listening to us’: on the school protest frontline, I heard why France’s students feel disowned | Alexander Hurst | The Guardian." October 9, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that French teenagers are protesting because their schools are falling apart and their teachers are underpaid, and that the government made things worse by sending riot police instead of listening. Repairing schools would help, but the deeper issue is that young people feel nobody in power pays attention to them.
Conclusion
France's student protests reflect a government that has disinvested in education and in youth and responded with repression. Fixing the schools is necessary but not sufficient: the political class must genuinely listen to a generation that feels abandoned.
Premises
- French schools are in demonstrable crisis: dilapidated buildings (collapsing ceilings, rats, mould, no drinkable water), larger class sizes (27 to over 30 since 2010), a 27th-place OECD ranking, and half of schools missing teachers at the start of the year.
- Teacher shortages stem from low pay and poor treatment, such as French teacher salaries at 56% of German levels, while over €200bn a year in public subsidies goes to businesses. This points to a political choice to disinvest in education.
- The government responded to the protests with riot police, teargas and mass arrests (4,400, mostly minors), and students suffered serious injuries (lost eye, lost hand, broken jaw). This is a disproportionate response to largely non-lethal property-damage protest.
- Successive governments have long handled troubled urban areas with heavy-handed policing and with centralised policies that send the least experienced teachers to the hardest schools. This suggests these places and their young people are not treated as fully part of society.
- Better facilities help: the rebuilt Gabriel Péri school became calmer and made the community feel more respected. But Macron's decade in power shows a pattern of failing to make people feel seen and heard, and students themselves say the government only offers false promises.
- More policing and harsher sentences, as the political right proposes, will not solve the problem and a future far-right government would likely worsen tensions.
Assumptions
- The students' grievances about school conditions are accurate and representative, not exaggerated by a few interviewees.
- Police violence against the protesters was disproportionate and attributable to government policy, not to isolated incidents or to the protesters' own conduct.
- A feeling of being listened to is a distinct and necessary part of the solution, beyond material investment.
- The experiences of a handful of interviewed students and teachers reflect broader youth sentiment in France.
- The French government has the fiscal and political capacity to reallocate funds toward education.
- Correlation between poor conditions and unrest implies the conditions are the cause of the protests.