School protests resume in France as schools reopen

French student protests resumed on a much smaller scale than in past weeks as pupils returned from a two-week break, ⁠with young people trying to blockade a few secondary schools in Paris, Marseille and Rennes.

Just 1% of France's 3,700 secondary schools for 15 to 18-year-olds called lycees were blockaded, the education ministry said.

Hundreds of France's more than 3,000 secondary schools were blockaded in the weeks prior to the break.

The protests, which began in the Paris suburbs in September, have spread across France and broadened beyond education to focus on the cost of living, drawing in trade unionists and activists and sometimes turning ‌violent.

Students want the renovation of aging schools, more teachers, more university places and the end of a university admissions system they see as socially unfair.

In the southern city of Marseille, several bins were stacked in front of the entrance to one school.

"We've resumed the movement because we were supposedly given answers, but... it's clearly not enough," 16-year-old Meriem said.

A wave of so-called "Gen ⁠Z" protests has swept across European countries including Germany, Italy, Belgium and Albania, driven by grievances including the cost of living, the poor state of schools and perceived corruption.

Last month French protests degenerated into violent clashes with the police and outright riots in several ‌cities, with shops looted, in a test for President Emmanuel Macron's minority government.

Pupils maintained their protest after hundreds of thousands of people, including students, took to the streets across France on Saturday for a third consecutive weekend of demonstrations.

"In terms of blockades — or rather, attempted blockades — the phenomenon is very marginal. We're talking about just a handful of units, a few individual schools," Education Minister Edouard Geffray told radio station France Inter.

He added that students should return to the classroom to 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.

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He said protests are allowed but preventing access to schools is illegal.

Police officers were present, TV footage showed, though not in full anti-riot gear.

Mr Geffray offered last week to cap class sizes at 28, dedicate €4 billion to renovating schools, create 15,000 new places for students in higher education and a new admission system by 2028.

Secondary school school student representatives said the offers were not enough and they would keep protesting.

President Emmanuel Macron has called for classes to resume in a calm manner, arguing that "young people have been heard".

With the European Union's second-largest economy on the brink of recession and under pressure to rein in debt, the government has limited scope to appease student protesters through additional spending.