Article · Money and markets
France is closing up to 500 high schools because its own pupils are blockading them. More than 5,000 people were arrested in one week
On 5 October 2026, between 400 and 500 French lycées are fully or partly closed, because a pupil movement over teacher shortages, which began on 17 September, has turned violent: Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez reports more than 5,000 arrests in the week to 2 October, 85 percent of them minors, and Education Minister Édouard Geffray says 24 lycées have been burned or ransacked. In the same week, on 1 October, the government tabled a 2027 budget with 43 billion euros of new savings measures and 1,588 teaching posts cut. Pupil and teacher unions have called a national day of action for 6 October.
On 5 October 2026 France is closing up to 500 high schools, not because teachers are on strike, but because pupils are blockading them, and in a single week police arrested more than 5,000 people, 85 percent of them minors.
This is not only a story about schools. In the same week the euro area's second-largest economy tabled a budget that aims to save tens of billions of euros in one year, and teenagers in the street are now the first to ask, loudly, who pays for it.