Up to 500 French schools to be totally or partly closed Monday due to protests

Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Monday due to the protests by teenage students that have shaken the country, the education minister says.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled,” says Education Minister Edouard Geffray, adding that 24 schools have been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

The teens at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absences, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.

Geffray says the number of schools affected tomorrow will be comparable to the figure from Friday but vows there will be a “partial, progressive return to lessons.”

The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and security forces, which sometimes used tear gas and batons to disperse the children.