French students set fire to Paris school entrance on eve of nationwide day of action

Incidents were reported outside schools in France on Monday morning, a day before a major action called by the Union syndicale lycéenne (USL), a high-school students’ union.

Students have been protesting over overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and crumbling facilities.

Among the schools hit on Monday was the Vauquelin secondary school in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, where “around ten hooded and masked young people came up to the entrance”, according to headteacher Carole Zerbib. They “brought bins and inflammable items” to the doorway and then set them alight, she told French news channel BFMTV.

As a result, the school will remain closed for the day. “These are criminal acts that fall under the law and must be punished in the harshest possible way,” said Jean-Didier Berger, France’s junior interior minister.

Demonstrations and tensions were also reported outside the Voltaire, Sophie-Germain and Turgot high schools in Paris, as well as in the cities of Lyon and Lille. “Around forty higher-education sites” are also expected to be disrupted, Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste told the radio station Sud Radio.

Read more: Euronews