For the start of the 2022 school year, the rectorate of Versailles wanted to restore a calm working climate for the students of the Joliot Curie high school in Nanterre.
One month later, it is clear that the situation is getting worse day by day.
To the renewable strike of teachers and regular rallies in support of a suspended and then transferred mathematics teacher was added on Monday a blockade of students which degenerated on Tuesday morning.
It ended in clashes between high school students and police deployed to prevent this second day of blocking and allow entry to the 1,600 students of the establishment at the request of the National Education.
A total of 14 young people were arrested and taken into custody for throwing projectiles and firing mortars at police officers, two of whom were injured, according to the Nanterre prefecture.
For their part, the police used tear gas and fired three LBD shots.
Another person was reportedly injured outside the town hall.
Ten of the arrested are minor high school students, mostly between the ages of 15 and 17, and four are not students of the establishment.
The blockade was led by around thirty students and followed by a maximum of 250 people, again according to the prefecture, when the students claim that the blockade was supported by 90% of them.
“We received beatings”
“It degenerated today because the police came to the gates of the school.
Yesterday went well because they stayed on the other side of the sidewalk.
And the projectile fire is after we got gassed.
We also received truncheons, ”says Valentino, a final year student.
For their part, the teachers also believe that this "massive" police presence contributed "to strain the situation" and said they were "shocked" by the "disproportion between the police resources deployed and the reality of a peaceful blockade of teenagers in front of their school.
The students launched this call for the blockade to demand, in particular, the restoration of homework assistance in all subjects, the lifting of the ban on wearing loose clothing, such as abayas, assimilated to religious clothing and to support the teacher of mathematics suspended "without reason".
"The students decided to redo the blockade this morning because they were not satisfied with the answers given by the management the day before," explains Ahmed, a final year student and member of the high school life council.
In a press release, the prefect of the department, Laurent Hottiaux, “firmly” condemned this violence.