Paris Suburb Students Demand Basic School Resources Amid Protests Over Neglect

On a typical school day, 17‑year‑old Mohammed rises at 6 a.m., looks after his younger siblings while his single mother works as a security guard, then rides two packed buses and a local train to reach his high school in Sevran, a low‑income banlieue northeast of Paris.

“There aren’t enough chairs or desks for everyone, so some students have to stand,” Mohammed said. “Classes are so crowded you can’t talk to the teacher. During this year’s heatwave, temperatures in the packed rooms without shade or curtains felt like 40 °C, leaving me unable to think.”

Mohammed, in his final year of high school, hopes to study management and digital communication at a university in Paris. Yet he says the dire conditions make him feel that the odds are stacked against him and his peers.

“Some of us spend months without a teacher when absent staff aren’t replaced,” he said. “One class went without a French teacher for several months just before the baccalaureate, leaving us unable to cover the required texts. Recently we needed a teacher for an English‑taught subject, but the instructor who arrived couldn’t speak English.”

This week, the largest youth protest movement in France in decades saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets to denounce educational inequality, crumbling schools, teacher shortages and oversized classes. Hundreds of schools were blockaded, thousands of students detained, and rights groups warned of alleged police violence—one teenager lost sight in an eye, another lost a hand.

Mohammed and his peers, often backed by parents and teachers, have been on the front lines, barricading their school, Lycée Blaise‑Cendrars, located in one of mainland France’s poorest départements, Seine‑Saint‑Denis. They voted to keep protesting next week, taking their complaints to the mayor, local officials and education representatives. Many local politicians have backed their demands, and even French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu acknowledged that the teenagers’ concerns are “legitimate.”

Photos from Sevran students’ phones revealed broken chairs, holes in walls and ceilings, mould, buckets placed to catch leaks, and faulty lighting. They said basic necessities weren’t met—some toilets were broken, others lacked doors, toilet paper or soap. Video projectors and science equipment were also missing.

“We’re not asking for luxury—just the basics needed to learn in decent conditions,” Mohammed said. “Yet police on horseback charged us as we gathered to protest outside our school, firing tear gas and making arrests. Being charged by a horse is extremely dangerous; it could be fatal. I ran, trying to help my classmates.”

The high schools of Seine‑Saint‑Denis, a suburb bordering northern Paris, have helped drive the protests. The département has the youngest population in mainland France, one of the highest birth rates and among the lowest average incomes. Local schools also experience a high turnover of young teachers.

Even though the region co‑hosted the 2024 Paris Olympics and the government has launched several plans to tackle long‑standing inequality and poverty, the northeastern suburbs of Paris remain disadvantaged relative to the city centre.

In 2005, Seine‑Saint‑Denis sparked weeks of unrest across French housing estates, prompting a national state of emergency after two teenage boys died while hiding from police in an electrical substation. This week’s demonstrations show that inequality and discrimination in the Paris suburbs remain unaddressed, and mistrust between youths and police continues.

Sevran’s Lycée Blaise‑Cendrars, which enrolls over 1,000 students, has been at the centre of earlier protests over school conditions. In 2024, students and teachers posted a viral video highlighting the state of classrooms, toilets and equipment. The Île‑de‑France region announced a major refurbishment programme for high‑school buildings, but the teenagers say the core problems remain unresolved.

“We’re at a disadvantage because our parents aren’t as wealthy as others; they can’t afford to buy us books or take us to the cinema,” said Ilian, 17, whose family is of Moroccan heritage and whose father works as a traffic warden. “We’re missing school while we protest, risking falling behind in an exam year, and we’re eager to return to class to study—but the conditions are so dire we won’t stop until the government takes action.”

This week the education ministry pledged 3,000 teachers to urgently fill vacancies, but teachers’ unions responded with skepticism, arguing that longer‑term strategies and additional funding are essential—even if the government claims there is little money to spare.

Children’s mental health is also a concern in Seine‑Saint‑Denis. Ilian has been waiting months to see a child psychiatrist. At his school there is no school nurse and insufficient support staff for students with disabilities, he said.

“The police treat us like animals,” Ilian said. “They speak to us with cruelty.” He informed local officials that some teenagers have alleged that officers used racial slurs against them during the protests.

Stéphane Troussel, the Socialist president of the Seine‑Saint‑Denis département council who met the students this week, said: “It’s unacceptable that policing is contributing to the problems.” He urged the police to cease using a certain rubber‑bullet launcher, after they had already suspended stun grenades following injuries. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has defended the police’s tactics.

Stéphane Blanchet, the mayor of Sevran, said he backs the protesters’ demands. He noted that many of his town’s 52,000 residents, who face a higher‑than‑average poverty rate, feel “relegated” and forgotten by the state.

Sarah, 17, who aspires to attend an elite engineering school in Paris and whose father, a warehouse worker, is proud of her protest and meeting with the mayor, said teenagers in the banlieue “really feel abandoned”.

She added: “We’ve been surprised and grateful to see teenagers from more affluent parts of France marching in solidarity with us this week. We recognise our disadvantage and know we must work ten times harder than others to overcome discrimination linked to our postcode. Yet we cannot study effectively in these conditions when we’re not even assured a chair in school.”

Students’ names have been changed

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