Schools shuttered as student protests sweep through France

Home Shows A week in France To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: A WEEK IN FRANCE © FRANCE 24 11:23 Issued on: 05/10/2026 - 11:22 From the show The high school protest movement that's erupted over the past week here in France is showing no signs of slowing down. Demonstrations have raged at more than 1,200 high schools, and more than 5,000 people – most of them minors – have been arrested. Students are furious at what they say is a chronic lack of funding for state schools, with that anger exacerbated by accusations that state resources are unfairly distributed, with richer and whiter postcodes historically receiving the lion's share of funds. Also in this edition: Seven months away from presidential elections in France, French investigative journalism website Mediapart says it's authenticated 13-year-old anti-Semitic comments attributed to Jordan Bardella, the would-be far-right prime minister if Marine Le Pen's National rally seizes power. Bardella denies writing the messages on Facebook's Messenger chat platform and is suing the site for defamation.