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High school students in France blocked several schools on Monday as they returned from the autumn break, aiming to revive their protests even though the government made concessions during the holiday.
The education ministry said blockades hit only 1% of the country’s 3,700 lycees, the high schools that serve pupils aged 15 to 18.
Their action followed a third straight weekend of nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, when hundreds of thousands of people, students among them, marched against rising living costs.
Those rallies grew out of protests that high schoolers launched in September over inequality and learning conditions.
Officials responded with several measures, such as revising university admissions, guaranteeing more teachers and limiting class sizes. Some students, however, argue these steps fall short.
Students also held votes on whether to keep the movement going.
Protesters in Marseille stacked garbage bins at the gates of a high school early Monday.
“We’ve resumed the movement because we were supposedly given answers, but... it’s clearly not enough,” Meriem, 16, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) while sitting on top of one of the dumpsters.
Speaking to France Inter radio, Education Minister Edouard Geffray urged pupils to resume lessons so they avoid failing exams.
"I have students who are sitting the baccalaureate at the end of the year, and several hundred thousand of them haven’t attended classes for four or five weeks,” he said.
President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, urged a calm return to classrooms, insisting that “young people have been heard.”
Facing pressure to curb debt while the European Union’s second-largest economy teeters on the brink of recession, the government has little room to placate the protesters with extra spending.
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