This Tuesday 11th December, some 470 high schools were disrupted, including sixty blocked by the mobilisation of Lycee students, who demand the abandonment of several reforms.
Some 450 high schools were disrupted on Tuesday, December 11, including sixty blocked, in the context of the call for a “black Tuesday” launched by high school unions , who demand the abandonment of several reforms, according to a national count of the Ministry of Education. National Education. Hundreds of high school students have demonstrated in several cities in France.
The day before, the movement had grown during the day, with already 450 institutions disturbed.
The list of known specialities before Christmas
This movement, which protests in particular against the reform of the baccalaureate, the system of access to higher education Parcoursup and the national service universal (SNU), was born last week in the wake of protean anger of the “yellow vests”.
In his televised speech on Monday night, President Emmanuel Macron did not mention this high school movement.
Asked about the baccalaureate reform during questions to the Assembly, the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer said he committed to the list of “specialties” proposed next year in each high school in First are known “before the Christmas holidays”. An announcement supposed to reassure the parents and high school students still in the vagueness on several points of the reform.
#MardiNoir “La réforme du baccalauréat est le fruit de concertations avec plus de 40.000 lycéens”, rappelle @jmblanquer. Il promet que “toutes les spécialités soient connues dans chaque établissement avant les vacances de Noël”.#QAG #DirectAN pic.twitter.com/MErIJTrwjv
— LCP (@LCP) 11 December 2018
Tensions in Strasbourg and Saint-Ouen
The blockades of Lycee’s are accompanied by rallies, which mobilised a few thousand young people in Paris and the regions: a thousand protestors in the capital, the same number in Rennes, 600 in Nancy and Angoulême, 300 in Auxerre, Dijon, Lyon , Nîmes, Montpellier, Mérignac etc, according to police figures.
In Marseille, the demonstration dispersed in the calm at the end of the morning. At the foot of the rectorate, about fifty young people knelt hands behind the neck, referring to the controversial arrest of 151 young people last week near a high school in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines).
At Versailles, hundreds of Lycée students from four schools in Versailles demonstrated quietly at midday, followed closely by police vehicles. On the department of Yvelines, 15 young people were arrested.
The situation was tense in a few places in the morning: cars burned in the agglomeration of Strasbourg and a team of France 3 was taken apart; A 17-year-old high school student was wounded by a shotgun fire (LBD) during incidents in front of a high school in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). Some 45 young people were arrested on the department.
Un lycéen blessé par un tir de flash-ball à Saint-Ouen #SeineSaintDenis https://t.co/t0ZTHUYWSN
— Le Parisien | 93 (@LeParisien_93) 11 December 2018
“We remain determined”
Four organisations (the student union UNL, the federation of the parents of FCPE students, the union SNPES-FSU and the union of the lawyers of France SAF) protested Tuesday against “the repression” imposed on the high school students who protest.
According to Louis Boyard, president of the UNL, “in less than seven days, more than 1000 high school students” were arrested by the police. “In Mantes-la-Jolie, young people were filmed, humiliated, without respect for the presumption of innocence during police custody,” said Laurence Roque, of SAF.
“Macron makes us war and his police too, but we remain determined to block the country,” chanted the demonstrators in Paris.
“In the suburbs, we are disadvantaged because our bac grades will not have the same value as those from well-to-do cities,” says Jerome, 17, in high school at Jean-Zay High School in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis).
A delegation of Lycée students asked to be received at the ministry. Noting that the appointment would not be held with the minister but with his number 2 Jean-Marc Huart, she left, we learned from the Ministry of Education.
“Our interest is to get out of this crisis,” says rue de Grenelle. “The problem is that we are short of interlocutors and the claims have been unclear for a long time.”
High school students in the provinces lamented that Emmanuel Macron did not mention their demands in his speech Monday night. “Macron did not have a word for us”, so regretted Sacha, high school Claude-Fauriel in Saint-Etienne.
School leaders have recently voiced fears of outbreaks of violence that have sometimes accompanied blockades.
” Handling “
For its part, the Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal deplored Tuesday morning “a manipulation” led by the “ultragauche” and “some deputies of La France unchallenged”. On Sud Radio, she estimated that this movement, however, affected “a small number of high schools, 400 to the strongest of more than 2000”.
#MardiNoir dans les lycées “Il y a une forme de manipulation de certains partis politiques, de l’ultra-gauche. Certains députés @FranceInsoumise haranguent les jeunes. C’est un manque de responsabilité” @VidalFrederique #SudRadioMatin ➡ https://t.co/tuHO9SqMRY pic.twitter.com/NVzSgJ6cQD
— Sud Radio (@SudRadio) 11 December 2018
“But what is worrying is that it is immediately extremely violent,” she said: “It is also not sure that it only concerns high school students. There are gangs that are grafted onto it, and then there is a form of manipulation by political groups and certain political parties. ”
On the academy of Rennes, the rectorate listed 24 Lycee’s affected by the movement: 12 blocked and 12 disturbed. The Orleans-Tours Academy counted only one high school “in filtering blockage”.
In the academy of Montpellier, there were about thirty institutions disturbed.
