RICHARD KAY: After hate-filled violent protests across France, why children as young as 14 are burning down their schools and attacking teachers

Along the streets of Saint Denis, the sting of tear gas has gone. The twisted carcases of giant rubbish bins set ablaze and propelled towards lines of police, and the remnants of the discharged fireworks used as missiles, will take longer to clear.

After hate-filled violent protests erupted at schools in this impoverished Paris suburb and in cities across France, peace of a sort yesterday, temporarily at least, returned.

It came at a price, with more than 400 schools closed and students ordered to attend remote lessons last seen during the Covid pandemic. A desperate gamble by ministers caught unprepared by the scale of thuggish demonstrations.

Even in a country where revolution and the right to protest are baked into cultural attitudes, the level of violence has been shocking. The reason? The perpetrators are, by and large, children, some as young as 14.

In the southern city of Marseilles, a head teacher was doused in petrol as he tried to prevent arsonists setting fire to his school. In Lille, northern France, a headmaster was struck in the ear by a firework. Another school employee was hit by a firework to his leg.

On Thursday alone, 305 gendarmes were injured, including a young woman officer fleeing from a masked mob who tripped and attacked her as she fell.

School premises have been burned to the ground and fire engines vandalised to prevent them from dealing with blazes. TV footage showed a fireman engulfed in flames after an aerosol can exploded outside a school in Bordeaux.

One French outlet claimed that fireworks and other missiles were hurled at police, along with hydrochloric acid. Footage online appeared to show one youth holding a lighter in front of an aerosol and spraying it at a woman as a makeshift flamethrower. Intelligence officers say electric scooters were being used to ferry fireworks between schools and help suspects escape police.

Films of the running battles between riot police and students have fuelled an anger which has gripped the country.

Many are furious at the mindlessness of it all and the failure of authorities to get a grip.

Much of that fury has been directed at Emmanuel Macron, France’s lame-duck president whose final months at the Elysee Palace have been plagued by rows over budget cuts and austerity.

But there has been outrage too at some of the heavy-handed responses towards adolescents. Video online showed a frightened-looking teenage girl being half-dragged in a chokehold by a burly policeman.

Another appeared to show a baton round being discharged at almost point-blank range at a masked youth. It has since been claimed the boy suffered a broken jaw and shattered teeth. At least three internal police investigations are under way, while prosecutors claim the youth had struck a policewoman beforehand.

Protesters also claim that a ‘secondary school student’ lost an eye after being hit by a projectile.

But all this should be measured by the savagery officers and others have faced. There were almost 2,000 arrests on Thursday when students blockaded school buildings in more than 900 protests.

A teacher at a school near Orleans, south of Paris, was punched by a teenager not from his school, while professors at two lycees in Rennes, Brittany, had their cars vandalised. A total of 284 people were injured, including one young protester who lost the use of part of his hand after apparently mishandling a firework.

The demonstrations have spilled beyond schools into town and city centres. Marseille’s public transport network suspended all services after drivers were attacked and buses burnt. Strasbourg and Grenoble took similar measures.

In the Paris region, troubles have erupted even in usually quiet suburbs such as Vanves, where youths in hoods and masks gathered on a roundabout to throw firecrackers at police vehicles.

French citizens horrified by this spreading uprising have taken to social media claiming the country is losing its unifying culture. Others say the fact that many protests erupted in poor quarters, traditionally where immigrants are housed, prove that France is paying the price for open borders.

Damage to schools over the past days is estimated at £850,000.

There are calls for robust action. Eric Ciotti, the Right-wing mayor of Nice has called for the benefits of parents of violent school protesters to be withdrawn.

What is clear is that what began as teenage complaints over what they resent about school has been escalated by far-Left activists.

The finger of blame is being pointed at the populist leftist party, France Unbowed, which the government has accused of whipping up disorder, describing it as an ‘organised manoeuvre’.

Its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is expected to face Right-wing firebrand Marine Le Pen in a runoff for next year’s presidential election, denied this, saying protests were ‘self-organised’.

To win next April the hard Left will need the support of the young and many of those involved in this week’s clashes will be eligible to vote for the first time.

Inconveniently, the mayor of St Denis, Bally Bagayoko, a member of a coalition of the Communist and France Unbowed parties, joined one of the school blockades and described the protest as ‘completely legitimate’. He was carried shoulder high by pupils singing La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.

Back-to-school protests are an annual French ritual, often involving union-led strikes over pay, staffing and class sizes. But what began as frankly petty complaints about restrictions on mobile phone use, long queues for canteens, and inadequate supplies such as toilet paper, dramatically changed.

The first blockade was at the Lycee Saint-Exupery in Creteil, southeast Paris, where pupils complained there were not enough staff or support for children with special needs.

It spread rapidly through poorer Paris suburbs amid anger over more genuine demands such as absent teachers, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classes, as well as claims of not enough desks and chairs.

Students at the Paul-Eluard school in St Denis complained of classrooms being too hot or too cold and of rats and cockroaches.

At a school not far away in St Ouen a 16-year-old said: ‘At first it was peaceful, but it went too far when about 15 young people who had come from another town took the opportunity to run riot.’

Copycat protests erupted, driven by slick AI-generated posters on TikTok and Snapchat which suggested a degree of planning to the unrest.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu urged government ministers to cancel all trips away from Paris, officially to avoid additional strain on police resources. Some suggested he was afraid that they would become targets too.

Lecornu also chaired a crisis meeting, after which his office said the school riots had ‘tipped into urban violence’ – a statement of the obvious given the tumult.

Students gathering outside the Suger Lycee in St Denis yesterday held banners reading: ‘8am until 6pm is like prison’.

As they faced off with around 50 armed riot police brandishing shields, a protester called Gilles, 17, told the Daily Mail: ‘Classrooms are dirty, teachers are not always present, and yet we are expected to sit around all day.

‘The conditions are terrible, and yet the government just takes money away, rather than doing something about the deep problems.’

Lycee, or high school students, in France – aged between 15 and 18 – are preparing for the crucial baccalaureat, the equivalent of A-levels, which is a primary requirement for university entry.

Le Bac’ – as it is universally known – is a tough exam, in multiple subject areas and accordingly many individual timetables do indeed stretch from 8am to 6pm – far longer than British state schools, where teaching is roughly from 9am until 3.45pm.

The protests are not confined to the impoverished suburbs (the infamous banlieues). At the exclusive Lycee Henri IV, on the tourist-filled Left Bank of Paris, where past students include the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Macron himself, the front entrance was blockaded by about 50 mainly female students.

An 18-year-old, who asked to be referred to as Mathilde, said: ‘We support all our oppressed brothers and sisters across France, and won’t stop until there is justice for all of them.’

It was this kind of blockade that sparked the infamous Paris riots of 1968, a brutally crushed insurrection that wanted to overthrow the government of General Charles de Gaulle.

The parallels are significant. For the schools unrest comes at a perilous time for Mr Macron. France’s public debt has soared to over £3trillion and swingeing cuts to public services have been ordered.

Meanwhile organisers are calling for a ‘national mobilisation’ next week. And later this month the anti-government gilets jaunes, or yellow vest, protesters who paralysed France in 2018 are holding a rally against Macron’s cuts.

Protesting students may be the spark to a far greater and more dangerous conflagration.

Additional reporting by Peter Allen and Rory Mulholland in Paris.