France’s student strikes

French students have been protesting in the largest numbers since the historic May 1968 Paris uprising. Protests began last month in Paris’s northern suburbs, where students have struggled to learn in crumbling, pest-infested schools with too few teachers. Students say the government’s latest budget isn’t enough to fix the school system’s failings, and they are demanding more. Public anger over the budget and abysmal school conditions has spread—and so have the protests; students have been blocking high schools and protesting in the streets in the thousands. The government’s response has been heavy-handed and violent; there have been many recorded incidents of police brutality against young and vulnerable high school students. On Saturday, Oct 17th, 550,000 students, parents, educators, and trade unionists across the country flooded the streets to demand drastic, immediate improvements to the school system.

Laurent (pseudonym) is a 35-year-old Information Technology teacher in a public school located in a city in Brittany, France. The students at his school are not currently on strike, but have held a few small rallies in solidarity with striking students across the country. I spoke with him to get his impressions as a public educator witnessing student protests from inside the country.

Danielle Bullock: What is currently happening in your school? Are students on strike?

Laurent: I work in a school near the city of Rennes, and there’s not a lot of protest here (in my school) for basically two reasons. One being that most of our students come from a sort of wealthier background, and they are not that involved in politics because they don’t have to be. So we just have a smaller number of students who are really involved in politics.

And one other factor is most students come in with the bus. So when they arrive, it’s just two minutes before classes begin. So you can’t quite block your high school if you don’t arrive one hour before. So what we have, what the director of (my) school said is, it’s okay to protest in front of the building, but everyone who wants to come in has to be able to come in. So what we had the first few days (of the student strike) was one to two hundred students in front of the high school protesting. But my high school has 1,200 students. So mid-range in terms of size.

Starting the second day, most of the students were still back in school because parents had to write a note saying their kid was on strike. They had to justify why the kids were not at school. And so we had one or two days with sort of a bigger protest in front of the high school, and ever since, almost nothing. The fact that students come to our school by bus is really a huge factor. In the nearby city (Rennes), there are a lot more protests at the high schools, and those schools are completely blocked. And there’s also quite a bit of vandalism. Because it’s a city where, historically, whenever there is a protest, there is a lot of stuff that is destroyed and vandalized. So with this high school movement, it sort of follows the same trends.

DB: And the university students in Rennes, are they on strike in solidarity?

L: We have two big universities in Rennes. Big for France —they’re not the same size as American universities. There’s one (university) for science and one more for literature and politics and everything.

And the one that teaches literature and foreign languages is always on strike whenever there’s something. So this time as well, they blocked the university. I didn’t hear much about the scientific one, the scientific university. Also, because the campus is really large, it’s really hard to block anything. There are dozens of buildings, smaller buildings. So I didn’t hear much from them, but I know that at the literature one, the students went on strike as well.

DB: What do you think is the main reason why the students are on strike?

L: It’s quite difficult, actually, because it started as really a local thing because there are some high schools, especially near Paris, that are in really complete disrepair. And their first ask was: we want to be able to study in good conditions. For example, we want classrooms that aren’t 8 degrees Celsius (40º F) in the winter and 40 degrees Celsius (104º F) in the summer. We want teachers because when teachers are absent, or there are vacancies, there are no substitutes. We want chairs for everyone. We want tables for everyone, which is not quite the case in all of these (schools).

But it’s quite a small number of high schools that have these sorts of issues. And these demands, I’ve been hearing about them for years now. And so the students started to do a bit of protesting. This time it went directly to blocking the high school because, back in my days as a high school student, first it was a protest in the street, and then, if nothing happened, we blocked the high school. This time they went with blocking first.

With social media, there have been some videos of bins burning in front of high schools. Also, one big factor was that the political answer [to the strikers’ actions] was to send the police, and heavily armored police, directly. This really escalated the protests from the start. There have also been some videos of police violence against (what are) basically kids, and this is over social media, so it’s really spread rather quickly, which inspired other students who saw the videos and said, okay, we want to be part of that as well, and began to protest.

DB: And what are the consequences of students not going to school if they were on strike?

L: Where I am, there are no consequences. I mean, since most students go to class, the main consequence is that they don’t attend, so they fall a bit behind. But as far as I know, in my high school, the director is really more into dialogue. So he will let them speak if they want to speak. And if they want to protest, they can, as long as they don’t destroy anything. So where I am, the strategy is really not escalation at all. It’s just, okay, you want to protest? We will give you a place where to protest. They’re in dialogue with the director to talk about any issues, but the thing is, most of the demands are at a country level. So the director, he can’t do anything about these demands.

DB: Why did it have to come to this point where people are so angry? Students are so angry.

L: The thing is that the students from the first high schools near Paris, they said we have been asking nicely for years, and we’re only heard when we start burning stuff. The current president has been ignoring what people in the streets have to say from the beginning. He’s never tried to discuss what people depend on. And even François Hollande before him, whenever there was a huge protest, he would send the police and just try to intimidate as much as possible.

So basically, there is no dialogue between what people ask for and the government, and it’s been the case for ten to fifteen years now. That’s basically why everything’s coming to this point, because when there’s no dialogue, of course, tension is building. And at some point, it has to burst.

DB: What is the general opinion of teachers about what’s going on with the strikes?

L: I’ve been talking with colleagues. I mean, teachers, as everyone, have different political opinions. And people who are more on the right, to the far-right side, they support the police and (they think) all these kids should go back to school. [They say] they’re ridiculous, their demands are childish, and they should go back home or go back to school.

From a more left point of view, I mean, of course, we support what they ask for. Because basically what they want is better conditions to work in. So the demands are not quite localized [some demands are more generalized and appeal to wider layers]. For example, there are also huge school days, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with big gaps in the middle, so really exhausting for students. Some of them have a one-hour drive to go to school and the same to go back home, and they are completely exhausted.

Another thing is, after high school, there is a system, a platform (Parcoursup), where you register if you want to go on to higher education. And since the supply for higher education in France is not enough to meet the demand, there’s a lot of frustration about that system and that platform. And we can understand that this platform creates a lot of stress because it looks at old school reports for the entire high school [career]. So every bad grade, even two or three years before the end of high school, can mean that you have a worse report and mean that you cannot really get into the school [college] you want. So it’s a lot of pressure for a long time for the students, and that we can empathize with. So we support the demands.

Then there are basically two categories of teachers. Some who say, we’re in France, and in France, if you want to get something, you really never get anything unless you break stuff first. So we’re really, yeah, there’s some vandalism, but that’s France; that’s how it is. And some others who are like, yeah, we support the demands, but it would be really better if there weren’t that much vandalism. So basically, you have the two opinions from what I’ve been seeing around me, my colleagues.

DB: Have any of the teachers’ unions made statements in support of student strikes?

L: You have unions that are more on the right side and many of them that are more on the left side, but there’s the one big one and a lot of smaller ones, which are still quite big.

And we have the choice every couple of years. There are some elections to see which are the bigger unions and how they should be taken into account with the secretary of education. [This determines which union] will have a bigger voice speaking with the secretary of education. So in France, teachers can go on strike if a union calls for it. And almost instantaneously, they all said, okay, starting now, you can go on strike. We cover you.

DB: So—teachers can go on strike as well as students?

L: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DB: When you say the union will “cover you”, what do you mean?

L: They [the union] have to say, “We declare that there is a strike starting now. So that if we don’t go to work, it will be considered as participating in that strike instead of just, oh, I decided I don’t want to go to work.

DB: Right, but teachers—there will be no other consequences for teachers?

L: Right, so you won’t get paid, but you won’t lose your job, or you won’t have any kind of penalty. That’s how strikes work in France. You need the union that will say, ” Okay, as a union, we decided to go on strike.” And then every worker is included in that; we don’t have to provide proof that we are part of that union. We can just participate in that strike.

DB: What are the teachers’ main complaints? If teachers had to say what the worst thing about French schools is, what do you think they would say?

L: Oh, there’s a lot. Because the first strike for us this year was a week before the student strike started. Because basically, the prime minister announced his plan for next year’s budget. And in that budget, it was said that the pay would remain exactly the same. So basically, it means that we lose money because of inflation. And it’s been the case for basically years now. It started in the 80s. This difference between what we’re actually paid and inflation doesn’t follow exactly. And it means 20 to 30 percent pay cuts compared to what it was in the 80s. So it’s quite huge. That’s basically one major grievance—that teachers in France are quite underpaid. And so much so that there are a lot of problems recruiting new teachers.

DB: In comparison to how much they pay police, do teachers make more or less?

L: Yeah. The thing is, there’s one major difference that will make comparison quite hard—the level of qualification is really not the same. So if you were a teacher in France until recently, you needed five years of education, a master’s degree. And to become a police officer, you just need to have finished high school. So the bar is really lower. I would say police officers get slightly higher pay.  I don’t know quite all the details, but at least in the beginning, their pay is better.

DB: So less qualifications, better pay.

L: There’s probably way more teachers than there are police officers in France, because almost everything is public. I think there are 800,000 teachers in France. So it’s quite huge. So if you want to raise their pay, it’s billions [of dollars]. Even if the increase isn’t really high, it’s billions instantly. It’s in this context that the state doesn’t have much money; it’s quite hard [for the state] to increase our pay. And the unions, they say, we will not negotiate a pay increase without also negotiating working conditions. Because what we had a couple of years ago, our secretary said, ” Yeah, so we will give you a pay increase.”  But what he did basically was create another way for us to do extra hours, which would then get paid, which is not quite the same as, okay, you’re getting a pay increase. No, it’s an increase in labor too.

And then a lot of things go with that. Since the pay is not quite good, we have trouble recruiting. So in many places, there aren’t enough teachers. So basically, in these places, in the places where people don’t want to go, there aren’t many teachers. And there aren’t many substitute teachers who are real [credentialed] teachers.  There were some posts on eBay, yeah, we need a teacher. You need 15 minutes in front of someone who will say, ” Okay, you’re good. You can go in front of students,” and that is the whole process. That’s how the substitute teachers are recruited in some places. So the quality is really, it can be good because some of them can be good, but there’s no guarantee that the people who are in front of the students are any good at all. But many substitute teachers aren’t being hired right now. They’re not putting them in a classroom.

DB: So what happens to a class when there’s no teacher?

L: If the teacher gets sick, the class is canceled. There are two things. If the teacher is away for less than two weeks, they won’t even search for a replacement because it’s too difficult. If the teacher is away long enough and substitute teachers are available, you can ask for one.

DB: So if somebody just gets sick, you get the flu, and you are out for five days, there’s no class. So what do students do when there’s no class?

L: Yeah, usually in high school, they have some rooms where they can sort of relax and/or work if they want to. But if the high school is in a really bad state, maybe those rooms are quite horrible, or they don’t exist. So the inequalities are there as well. And no work for the students is provided.

DB: How many students do you have at the most in a class?

L: Classes go up to 35, 36, and that’s one of the reasons why I have a lot of students. The demand is that, okay, when we are having a full class all together, 35, 36 is way too many for one teacher to teach properly, so we want smaller groups.

Because the state says teachers cost too much and cut the number of teachers, this led to bigger classes, even though the number of kids was rising at the time. Now we have the opportunity [to correct this] because people are having fewer kids, and the number of students in middle school and high school is slowly decreasing. And so basically there are two options. Either you keep the number of teachers the same, and you have smaller classes, or you decrease the number of teachers to follow the decrease in students.

And there’s a big issue about how much we want to spend on education in France. That’s basically the one thing: what place we want to give education in our spending. And the politics that have been in France for many years is—we try to not invest much in public stuff.

And yeah, probably private will develop. Oh, we’ll see. And that’s [true] for teaching, that’s [true] for health, that’s for most of the justice as well; it’s been underfunded for years now. All the public sector, except maybe police because there’s always money for police, and the army. But other than that, all the public sector, it’s been quite underfunded for years now. But that’s a choice that we have to make as a society.

DB: How do you think the student strikes will be resolved?

L: Unfortunately, after the riots last Saturday, I don’t have much hope for a happy ending. The videos of vandalism are everywhere to be seen, and they completely eclipsed the legitimate claims from the students. In the news, it feels like it sparked a bigger movement, and we’ll see if the students can keep their own strikes without huge interference from anyone else. In case of interference, the political right asks for a lot more police repression (against protesters).

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Featured Image credit: FreCha; modified by Tempest.