Up to 500 schools across France will be fully or partially closed Monday due to ongoing violent student protests, the education minister said Sunday.
Classes will be "fully or partially suspended" at some 400–500 high schools because security conditions "have not been fulfilled," Edouard Geffray was quoted by France 24 as saying.
The official added that 24 schools had been "burned or ransacked" since the start of the student protests demanding better learning conditions.
"There are activists—particularly from the far-left—who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence," Geffray said.
He said the protests posed a risk to both staff and students, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded, "something we have never seen before."
According to the latest data, more than 5,000 people, 85% of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the unrest.
Several organizations representing the student movement, together with left-wing and far-left political groups, have called for a second round of mobilization on Oct. 6 against what they described as police "repression."
