PARIS: Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed due to the protests by teenage pupils that have shaken the country, the education minister said. Lessons will be "totally or partly suspended" in some "400-500" high schools as the security conditions "have not been fulfilled", said Education Minister Edouard Geffray on Sunday, adding that 24 schools had been "burned or ransacked" since the start of the movement.
The teens at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absences, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances. Geffray said the number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday but vowed there would be a "partial, progressive return to lessons".
"There are activists — particularly from the far-left — who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence," Gefrray claimed. "Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students," he alleged, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded — "something we have never seen before". "They were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system," Geffray claimed. — AFP
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