French students took to the streets again on Thursday, October 8, as a fresh day of high-school blockades and marches swept the country in the third week of a protest wave — while across the border in Belgium, student rallies against education costs boiled over into riots that forced police to fire water cannon and tear gas in Liège.
Thursday's rallies: hundreds of schools blocked
Teenagers blockaded hundreds of high schools and marched through cities nationwide on Thursday, defying a televised government promise of action. France's education ministry said 224 schools were blockaded in the morning, falling to 157 by lunchtime, meaning roughly 96 percent of schools stayed open. Scuffles between police and protesters broke out at some blockade locations in Paris, while large crowds demonstrated from Lille in the north to Marseille and Toulon in the south.
The movement's core demands — overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, dilapidated buildings, and punishing 8am-to-6pm school days — have only hardened since protests began in late September. "Sometimes our teachers are absent for several weeks without being replaced," Paris student Madalena told the BBC. A teacher marching in Marseille carried a placard reading: "I'm a teacher and my students help me catch cockroaches in class."
Government promises an emergency plan
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu used a televised address Wednesday evening to promise a government response to the crisis by the end of October, admitting that "too many promises were not kept" in the past and insisting on "concrete, quick and fully funded answers." He denied security forces had "orders to confront" young protesters.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray met students and teachers at a high school in Reims on Thursday, announcing an emergency plan to ensure absent teachers are replaced on a long-term basis, with heavy school timetables also under review. Student leaders dismissed the pledges as too vague and called for larger demonstrations next week.
The protests have already carried a heavy toll: more than 6,500 people — mostly minors — have been arrested, hundreds of students, teachers, and police have been injured, and police have opened 18 internal investigations into alleged misconduct. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez suspended the use of stun grenades after a 15-year-old boy lost a hand Monday in a clash in Lens. Geffray told parliament that 24 high schools were damaged by fire or vandalism badly enough to stay closed for weeks, affecting about 30,000 students, with repairs estimated at 20–30 million euros ($23–35 million).
Anger spills across the border into Belgium
The French protest wave is now inspiring unrest in Belgium. Hundreds of students have taken to the streets of Liège in recent days to protest rising education costs and crowded classrooms in Belgium's French-language education system — some saying they are directly in touch with French counterparts. "We support each other because we're facing pretty much the same issues," 19-year-old student Alfred told Reuters.
The Belgian protests turned violent on Wednesday: police used water cannon and tear gas to push back several hundred demonstrators in Liège, nearly 90 people were arrested and several officers were injured. Belgian authorities sent BE-Alert emergency messages urging shopkeepers to close, briefly shut Liège's main train station, and warned people to avoid the city center. Liège Mayor Willy Demeyer banned public gatherings until midnight on October 16, citing a "real, serious and immediate danger" of renewed clashes. On Thursday, smaller demonstrations were held outside schools in Brussels and at the University of Liège.
The Belgian students' anger echoes the French movement's roots: they oppose education reforms in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and a tuition increase for most students in the French-speaking community to $1,280 from about $895, carrying signs reading "We are fighting for a right! Not a privilege!"
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Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Hitman (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
The takeaway: Thursday's rallies showed the French student movement is not fading — it is adapting, and its grievances are now echoing across a border. With the government promising answers by the end of October and student unions promising larger demonstrations next week, the standoff between the classroom generation and the state is set to define France's autumn.
Sources: Reuters, AP/Channels Television, Channel News Asia, Ynetnews.