France’s broken schools spark revolt against inequality

The events unfolding on the streets of Paris and other cities in France may feel far removed from the general election here. But the protests by school students (and some of their teachers) across France in recent weeks should make us think about the direction of our own education system and society.

When I have asked people for their thoughts on these protests, a common response has been, “Well, the French do like a riot”. (Incidentally this is repeated on the cover blurb of Andrew Hussey’s Fractured France: a journey through a divided nation: “The French have always loved to protest, to strike, to take to the streets in rebellion against the state or the status quo.”)

The students are protesting against the lack of investment and quality of teaching in schools and the impact this will have on their economic and life prospects. As the Guardian Weekly reported, “a broken and unequal school system has promoted protests”.

It reports deteriorating conditions with large class sizes, teacher shortages, dilapidated and rat-ridden buildings. Students say these are not conditions fit for learning.

Writing in Le Monde, French economist Thomas Piketty set out some of the facts about French education: although the government says spending on education has increased by 17 percent between 2017 and 2026, costs have risen by 22 percent, and the number of students from 3.6 million to 5 million.

This represents a reduction in spending per student of 20 percent. At a time of heightened uncertainty about the future, more students are staying in a system that is underfunded and ill-equipped to meet their needs.

Legitimate protesters have been joined by a hardcore of troublemakers who have an interest in disorder and looting – sowing the seeds of anarchy, targeting high-end luxury stores, and goods advertised through the online platform Vented. The cry from the right is one of outrage at the disrespect for property, though of course, we could ask whose property? I would argue that over the past three decades, the neoliberal turn has destroyed the common property (including schools) built up and shared by all French citizens.

The Macron government said there was no additional money available for investment, that France’s public debt increased from 20 percent of GDP in 1970 to 120 percent. That sounds bad. But, as Piketty notes, in the same period private capital assets increased from 300 percent of France’s GDP to 600 percent. This is wealth that has accumulated in private fortunes, property, and trust funds. France is richer (and more unequal) than ever, but there is no political will to tax these assets and use them for the public good.

However, this is not only about schools. The state of the French education system is part of a wider crisis that has been developing for decades. To understand why students, their teachers, and many others have taken to the streets, we need to understand the changing political economy of France itself.

Thomas Piketty’s bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century (in which he analyses 250 years of income and wealth data in Europe and the United States) is a good starting point. Piketty cannot be thought of as a ‘radical economist’, and if he is saying something is rotten it gives a sense of the depth of crisis.

Piketty traced the changing patterns of capital over the long durée. Between 1870 and 1920 – the Belle Epoque – wealth was highly concentrated; inheritance mattered more than graft or hard work.

In the middle decades of the 20th century, France (like many other countries) reduced levels of inequality, built up a social welfare system, reformed its inheritance laws, enacted reforms to empower women, and integrated migrant labour from its former colonies. It was when the idea of France as a nation where a social settlement provided prosperity and recognition to its citizens was firmly established.

However, since 1980, in countries such as France inequality has been widening again. Economic growth rates have been lower.

Wealthier households have become increasingly concentrated in affluent suburbs. As the gap between the super-rich and the general population has widened, France’s claim to be a wealthy, modern, egalitarian, and multicultural European nation has looked uncertain.

In other words, France is economically, socially, and educationally divided. France is hardly unique in this respect. Similar transformations have occurred in Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. Yet the French response has been distinctive. French workers, public employees and other working-class groups have proved unusually resistant to attempts to reshape the social contract along neoliberal lines. The latest school protests need to be understood within this much longer history of responses to the continuing crisis of the French economy and attempts to resolve that crisis by dismantling the social settlement established in the post-war decades.

Since the 1990s, France has experienced a succession of social upheavals: the strikes against Alain Juppé’s reforms in 1995; the banlieue uprisings that challenged celebratory narratives of multicultural integration after the 1998 World Cup; the warnings of the Invisible Committee in The Coming Insurrection; the labour-law protests of 2016; the Nuit Debout (‘Up all night’) movement; Yellow Vest mobilisations; and repeated conflicts over pension reform. Different constituencies were involved in each case, but together they pointed towards a common reality: a growing divide between governing elites and significant sections of French society.

A striking feature of these multiple protests is that they do not conform to the image of ‘left’ and ‘right’. What do public-sector workers, suburban youth, radical activists, pensioners, students, and the Yellow Vests have in common? Each, in its own way, suggests the political system is no longer able to guarantee social citizenship, economic security, and democratic representation. The result is a seemingly neverending cycle of protest. As Macron’s term as President comes to an end and presidential elections are held in 2027, he has been prepared to use the powers of the state to quell dissent.

Which brings us back to the opening (half-joking/half-serious) idea that “the French like to protest”. To see the latest demonstrations as simply another outbreak of French disorder is to miss the point.

What is unfolding on the streets of Paris is not merely a dispute about schools. It is another chapter in a much longer argument about inequality, democracy, and the future of the social contract that defined post-war France. The condition of French schools has become a measure of the condition of the Republic itself.