The school students’ mobilisation, which began in Val-de-Marne more than 15 days ago, reached a new stage after the public sector strike on 29 September. 338 high schools were blockaded on 29 September, and more than a thousand were affected by mobilisation on 1 October. On Friday 2 October, 735 high schools were still disrupted, and nearly 600 again this Monday 5 October, despite a large number of administrative closures.
In general, technological and vocational high schools, especially in working-class neighbourhoods, thousands of young people have taken to the streets to reject the deterioration of their study conditions and their sacrificed future. Nothing like this has been seen for 20 years, since the movement against the First Employment Contract (CPE).
This mobilisation did not come out of nowhere!
For years, school students have endured the shortage of teachers, overcrowded classes, absurd timetables, and the endless days that keep piling up. The degraded mode used during the Covid lockdown period has become the rule.
In many schools, buildings are dilapidated, toilets are insufficient, water leaks are multiplying, and heating or ventilation conditions are unfit. Studying in these conditions is becoming increasingly difficult.
When the time comes to think about the future after high school, it is either the search for jobs, hardship or unemployment. For those considering continuing their studies, Parcoursup (higher education application system) turns access to education into an obstacle course through fierce selection. They would have us accept any study and working conditions. No more! Things are breaking point!
Macron represses with the police and closes high schools
Faced with the anger being expressed, President Macron barely even pretends to hear the demands, and prime minister Lecornu proposes nothing. The government is even planning further cuts to teaching and staff posts: more than 1,500 are scheduled in the 2027 budget. It is showing contempt by continuing its policy of destruction.
At the same time, the repression is very violent, especially in working-class neighbourhoods and workers’ towns. Blockades have been violently dispersed, police forces have been deployed outside schools from the outset, and school students have been manhandled. 170 school students have been injured, several of them severely. One young person lost an eye in Tours, shot by a rubber bullet from a projectile launcher whose rounds leave at a speed of 350 km/h. Another in St-Ouen, aged 14, had his jaw completely shattered; in Lens, a 15-year-old school student had his left hand torn off.
For almost 10 years now, Macron’s government has used this weapon systematically. It is the same method as during the yellow vest movement or against the mobilisations after the murder of Nahel by a police officer. 5,000 people have been taken into police custody since the start of the school students’ movement, nearly 90% of them minors.
The government is now seeking to prevent young people from gathering by closing schools in a kind of “lockout”, like bosses who close factories to break workers’ strikes, and by imposing remote lessons.
All this reveals a certain fear on the part of the government and the capitalist parties: the fear of seeing the mobilisation spread and connect with workers’ anger. This strategy is already failing, because all the teaching staff unions have been calling for mobilisation alongside high school and university students since Friday 2 October.
Workers must join the strike of school students and university students!
The demands of school students are directly linked to the situation facing their families. The high cost of living, energy and food prices, low wages, redundancies and precarity already affect millions of people. Public services are being deliberately suffocated while billions continue to be paid to big companies and the richest. While hospitals, schools and transport lack resources and staff, large capitalist groups are accumulating profits.
Young people understand this more and more clearly: the deterioration of the national education system is not simply a ‘management error’. It is the result of a policy that prefers to finance the capitalists rather than meet the needs of the population. The government is making us pay for the crisis of capitalism, sacrificing study conditions, wages, jobs and public services all at once.
Only a massive and united struggle of young people, joined by workers, will be able to stop the social carnage and take back from the hands of the capitalists everything they take from us through our work and our gains.
We will not let ourselves be divided!
The movement of 1 October showed the anger, rage and determination that have developed among young people. A revolt is developing.
The aggressiveness of the police is frightening but no longer stops the mobilisation. A small section of young people confront the police, sometimes in a logic of revenge against the government and the violence they suffer in working-class neighbourhoods. And there are small organised fringe groups seeking to smash things up. Infiltrated police officers who provoke and smash things are also regularly identified.
The chaos is Macron and the capitalists who feed it every day through their policies, and who want it. Damage to school buildings, fires and attacks on education staff are disastrous and are not a sign of radicalism or stronger determination. What is truly radical is being thousands-strong in demonstrations putting forward demands; the real determination is that of the mass struggle of young people for their future. The majority of young people, including many schoolgirls from working-class neighbourhoods, reject breakage and destruction and want to find ways to make themselves heard collectively.
The accusations of manipulation against La France Insoumise have the same objective: to divide young people and workers. But it is not working! Activists from La France Insoumise and from other left-wing organisations are present alongside school students to support the mass struggle, not to remote-control it… which is impossible anyway. The majority of school students are concerned not to divide the movement into ‘good school students’ on one side and the ‘bad ones’ on the other.
Our side is taking shape again against Macron, the far-right National Rally, and all the capitalist parties: it is that of young people and workers trying to unite in a massive and determined struggle.
For a mass and long-term strike movement against Macron and Lecornu
To win, it is necessary to discuss, decide together and give the struggle a clear direction. School students must be able to meet in general assemblies, draw up their demands and regularly elect representatives in each school. Coordination between mobilised high schools would make it possible not to remain isolated, to share experiences and to prepare common actions, locally and then nationally.
The more numerous and organised school students are, the more it will be possible to resist repression and prevent the mobilisation from falling back.
It is to prevent students organising that the government is closing the majority of secondary school premises on the eve of the 6 October strike. The labour movement (trade unions and parties that defend workers) has a duty to support those who are fighting. We must reopen the secondary school buildings and ensure there are spaces where pupils can come together and decide for themselves what their demands are and how they wish to organise themselves.
6 October can be a decisive stage
Since Friday 2 October, education, health and other sector unions have begun calling strikes and organising solidarity, aware of the essential role that organised workers can play. This is what the trade union activists of Gauche Révolutionnaire have argued where they are active.
Unions in education, health and social care, railway workers and others will stand alongside young people on Tuesday 6 October.
This day must bring together school students, university students, teachers, other school staff and workers. In workplaces, assemblies must be called to discuss the situation and decide on concrete actions. Staff who applaud the marches from windows or support young people in the street can now take their place in the street alongside them.
On the university side, the largest mobilisations have so far been limited to certain universities such as Rennes. But things are going to take off because the anger is also enormous there, against study conditions, miserable budgets and the significant threat to subsidised €1 CROUS meals for all. University students are already demanding resources for education, mass recruitment, access to the studies of one’s choice, the end of Parcoursup and a real future for young people, including real jobs in the face of youth unemployment.
6 October must not be a simple day of demonstrations, but the beginning of a lasting struggle. To win, it will be necessary to build a balance of forces against the government and the capitalists whose interests it exclusively serves.
The public-sector strike on 29 September showed that potential exists. It is now necessary to prepare a massive strike, public and private, which could take the form of a three-day consecutive strike in all sectors. Such a mobilisation would allow strikers to organise, broaden the struggle, decide together on the forms of action and the next steps of the movement, and force Macron and the capitalists to retreat.
For the victory of the school students’ movement, and the defeat of Macron and all those serving the big bosses!
- For the end of rotten timetables, the recruitment of teachers and staff according to needs, the renovation of schools, the scrapping of Parcoursup and free access to the studies and training of one’s choice.
- Let us fight for an immediate general wage increase of €300, no income below €1,800, the freezing and lowering of prices, petrol at a maximum of €1 and real indexation of wages to prices, zero redundancies and restructuring plans, and massive investment in all public services.
To achieve this, Macron and his policy must be swept away, along with all the capitalist politicians who accept making the majority of the population pay for the enormous profits of a tiny minority.
Let us organise the struggle to force Macron to retreat!
The vast majority of young people and workers have the same interests. Together, we can stop their policy, if we coordinate. On 6 October, let us be in the streets. And from now on, let us build what comes next: in high schools, universities, trade unions and workplaces. Such a struggle against Macron will strengthen all workers against the capitalists and their system based on exploitation, the development of precarity and wars.
The activists of Gauche Révolutionnaire are fighting in their workplaces or places of study, and in their trade unions, for this. We are fighting for a society free from exploitation, poverty and the destruction of the environment: a socialist society managed democratically and collectively by the workers themselves. With one single objective: to meet needs and guarantee a decent life for everyone! Join us!