Students at Lycée Blaise-Cendrars in Sevran, a low-income suburb north-east of Paris, are continuing protests over poor school conditions, saying they are desperate to return to class but cannot stop until the government promises action.
Mohammed, 17, described waking at 6am, caring for younger siblings to help his single mother who works as a security guard, then taking two crowded buses and a local train to reach his high school. "There aren't enough chairs or desks to go round, so some students have to stand up," he said. "Classes can be so packed you can't interact with the teacher. In this year's heatwaves, it felt like 40 degrees in overcrowded classrooms with no shade or curtains. It was so hot my brain couldn't function."
Protests and police response
The protests, described as the biggest youth protest movement in decades, brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets across France this week, with hundreds of schools blockaded and thousands of teenagers arrested. Rights groups warned of alleged police brutality, with one child losing the use of an eye and another losing a hand.
Mohammed and his classmates have been at the frontline, barricading their school, which is in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of mainland France's poorest départements. They have voted to continue protests next week, taking grievances to the local mayor, elected officials and education representatives. Many local politicians have supported their demands, and French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu conceded that teenagers had "legitimate" concerns.
School conditions and demands
Photos on students' phones showed broken chairs, holes in walls and ceilings, mould, buckets to catch leaks, and faulty lights. Some toilets were broken, others had no doors, and often there was no toilet paper or soap. Video projectors and science equipment were lacking.
"We're not asking for luxury, just the basics to learn in decent conditions," Mohammed said. "And yet police on horseback charged us when we were gathered to protest outside our school, firing teargas at us and making arrests. It's so dangerous to be charged by a horse, it could kill you. I just ran, I was trying to help my classmates."
Broader inequality and government response
Seine-Saint-Denis has the youngest population in mainland France, one of the highest birthrates, and among the lowest average income. Despite co-hosting the 2024 Paris Olympics and numerous government plans to combat inequality, the area remains disadvantaged compared with the capital. In 2005, the area was the starting point for weeks of unrest after the death of two young boys hiding from police in an electricity substation.
Sevran's Lycée Blaise-Cendrars, with more than 1,000 pupils, has been at the heart of protests before. In 2024, students and teachers made a viral video about the state of classrooms. The local Île de France region said it had put in place a major refurbishment project, but teenagers said key issues had not been addressed.
Ilian, 17, whose father is a traffic warden, said: "We're starting at an unfair advantage because our parents aren't as rich as others, they can't buy us books, they can't take us to films. We're missing school during these protests, we risk falling behind in an exam year, we're desperate to get back into class to study, but the conditions we're facing are so bad we can't stop until the government promises action."
The education ministry this week promised 3,000 teachers to urgently fill gaps, but teachers' unions expressed doubts and said longer-term plans and more funding were needed. Children's mental health is also an issue, with Ilian waiting to see a child psychiatrist for months and the school lacking a nurse and support staff for children with disabilities.
Stéphane Troussel, the Socialist head of the Seine-Saint-Denis département council who met the pupils this week, said: "It's intolerable that policing is causing part of the difficulties." He called for police to stop using a type of rubber-bullet launcher, after they suspended use of stun grenades following injuries. The French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, has defended policing tactics.
Stéphane Blanchet, the mayor of Sevran, said he supported the protesters' demands, saying many in his town of 52,000 people felt "relegated" and forgotten by the state. Sarah, 17, who wanted to study at an elite Paris engineering faculty, said teenagers in the banlieue "really feel abandoned". She said: "We've been surprised and so appreciative of other teenagers in better-off places in France marching in the streets to support us this week. We know we're disadvantaged and that we have to work 10 times as hard as others to escape discrimination against our postcode. But we can't learn properly in these conditions when we're not even guaranteed a chair to sit on in school."
Students' names have been changed.
