French high school protests disrupt over 560 schools amid clashes with police

French high school students staged demonstrations in Paris and other cities on Friday, igniting fires outside school entrances and confronting police. The protests, which began last week in the Paris region and quickly spread nationwide, involve pupils in their final years of secondary education blocking access to school buildings and demanding improvements to long school hours, overheating classrooms, dilapidated facilities and chronic staff shortages.

"For a whole year, we didn't have a science teacher. We don't have any textbooks," said Simon, a 15-year-old at Turgot high school in central Paris.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray acknowledged the legitimacy of the grievances but warned that the movement was being influenced by "ultra-violent fringe groups." He said parents should discourage their children from joining the protests and emphasized the need to keep children safe.

The interior ministry reported that education had been disrupted at more than 560 of the country's 3,700 high schools, up from over 1,000 affected the previous day. In Marseille, many schools have shifted to remote learning.

At least 65 staff members, including 40 principals, and about 170 students have been injured since the protests began, according to Geffray. Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said prosecutors would hold parents accountable for damages caused by their children and for repair costs. Around 2,000 people, 90% of them minors, have been taken into police custody.

In Rennes, students celebrated the closure of their school, while in Brest police deployed tear-gas to disperse demonstrators. The government has suggested a link between the protests and the hard-left France Unbowed party, a claim the party's senior official Manuel Bompard dismissed as a conspiracy theory.