After more than a week of unprecedented mobilization by high school students in France — which, on Tuesday October 6, at the peak of the movement, disrupted classes in nearly one in four schools (891 out of about 3,700) — the number of actions has fallen sharply.
- The Ministry of National Education recorded disruptions in 375 high schools on Thursday, October 8, at the start of the day. Classes were suspended in 224 establishments, and disrupted in 151.
- It represents an 18% drop from yesterday, Wednesday, October 7, and a 58% drop from Tuesday, October 6. The comparison, however, is based on provisional figures.
According to an Elabe poll conducted from October 6 to 7, a majority of French people (55%) approve of the high school students’ mobilization, but only a quarter (26%) say they support it. Despite claims perceived as “legitimate” by nearly three-quarters (72%) of respondents, the movement is less popular than the Yellow Vests at the outset (73%), than the farmers’ mobilization of 2024 (83%), and than the Emergency hospital staff movement of 2019 (88%).
The high school movement therefore sits below the average (60% approval) of mobilizations surveyed by Elabe since 2017.
- The mapping of blocked high schools across France since September 28 shows a movement that is relatively uniform, though concentrated around Paris.
- By midday on Thursday, October 8, 145 high schools remained disrupted in Île-de-France, the region from which the mobilization originated.
- The region notes that acts of violence, clashes, or damage were recorded in about twenty establishments by Thursday midday.
The high school movement faced heavy repression: more than 1,900 arrests took place on Thursday, October 1st, i.e., 200 more than during the “Act IV” of the Yellow Vests movement, which had occurred on December 8, 2018. In six months, between 2018 and 2019, the authorities had carried out nearly 12,000 arrests, or about 480 per day of mobilization on average.
- That is half the average for the high school movement: about 950 arrests per day between September 28 and October 6.