Police have fired teargas at protesters as more than 250,000 pupils, teachers and parents demonstrated across France on the biggest day yet of a campaign for better high school conditions that has been marred by often violent clashes with police.
The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had been injured since the protests began more than a fortnight ago, calling the figures “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system”.
The country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called key ministers to the Élysée palace for talks on Tuesday night, French media reported.
The interior ministry said 200,000 people had taken part in mainly peaceful marches in cities including Marseille, Nantes and Lyon on Tuesday, with 56,000 more joining the biggest demonstration in Paris. Organisers put the total at 450,000.
Most passed off without serious incident, but some – including in Paris – ended in sporadic vandalism and running skirmishes with riot police, with officers firing teargas and carrying out baton charges to disperse protesters.
Trade unions and rights groups have accused the police of using unnecessary force against the young protesters in recent days, with Amnesty International saying French authorities should “put an end to the disproportionate police repression”.
At Tuesday’s demonstration in Paris, students held aloft smoke flares and placards with slogans including “under our text books, anger” – a nod to a celebrated “under the paving stones, the beach” slogan from the May 1968 student riots. Other slogans included “schools with no money = country with no future”.
One student, Anna, told reporters at the capital’s Place de la Nation: “Our demands are simple: better study conditions, enough teachers, decent school buildings. The authorities’ response has been catastrophic. There’s enough violence already.”
Tuesday’s marches came after two weeks of protests that began in the northern suburbs of Paris and have snowballed nationwide. Besides the injuries to protesters and staff, 715 police officers have been wounded in the clashes, Lecornu’s office said.
Demonstrators have set dustbins on fire outside their schools, destroyed bus shelters and hurled projectiles at riot police, who have responded with batons, teargas and riot-control rounds.
Twenty-four schools have been burned or ransacked since mid-September, while more than 6,100 people have been arrested, almost all of them minors. More than 1,800 are being prosecuted, nearly 1,500 of them under 18, the justice ministry said.
The education ministry said more than 900 of the country’s 3,700 high schools were blockaded or had been closed for the day on Tuesday, although student groups put the number at 1,800. Some local education authorities moved classes online.
Océanne, 18, was among the marchers in Marseille. “We just want to save our education and be educated,” she said, adding that she had suffered from absent teachers who were replaced either by “pointless substitutes” or not at all.
Many teachers were also demonstrating. In the western city of Rennes, Romain Dubourg said he and “about 30 colleagues” had “talked about the police brutality that we’ve witnessed, and decided to be there for our students if they need us”.
Trade unionists were also on the marches, with the head of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, urging members to “protect high school students”. The Green party leader, Marine Tondelier, urged local officials and parents to wear white and “go and protect our children during demonstrations”.
Anne Savinel-Barras, the president of Amnesty France, said: “The images and testimonies widely circulated over the past week raise alarming concerns about the dangerous use of teargas, batons and policing techniques by the police.” The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said police had launched 10 internal investigations into allegations of brutality since the protests started.
On Monday, a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off as protesters battled riot police in northern France.
A 16-year-old lost the use of his right eye after he was seriously injured in the head on Wednesday during the blockade of a high school in Tours. The local prosecutor, Catherine Sorita-Minard, said the wounds were “compatible with the impact of a defensive bullet of the blast ball type”.
In another incident, a 14-year-old lost most of his teeth on Monday when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him at close range during a protest north-west of Paris. “His jaw is sealed shut, he can no longer speak and he eats through a straw,” his mother told reporters.
Lecornu has ordered his ministers to tackle the students’ core demands, which include ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8am to 6pm school day and repairing ageing buildings.
He denied accusations of routine excess force by police, saying officers had mostly acted proportionately. He told MPs on Tuesday that “extreme violence” had come “knocking on high-school doors, and must be condemned”.
“Setting fire to a school will not help repair it. Attacking a teacher will not help replace missing staff,” he said.
The protests, seven months before crucial presidential elections to choose a successor to Macron, have piled pressure on a government trying to reduce a ballooning budget deficit amid mounting investor concern over France’s mountainous debt and weak economic growth.
The government has accused the radical-left La France Insoumise party of encouraging and even orchestrating the movement after numerous LFI MPs attended school blockades. The party’s veteran leader and presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has strongly supported the protests, while urging non-violence.
