Blocked high schools: no delay to the bac, head teacher hit on the head near Bordeaux

The bac timetable will not move. Speaking on France 2 on Monday 9 November, education minister Édouard Geffray shut the door on any postponement or lightening of the 2027 baccalauréat exams, despite the weeks of lessons lost in blockaded high schools. His answer instead: catch-up classes during the school holidays.

Booster courses in February or at Easter

The minister wants to build on an existing scheme, the so-called stages de réussite: full weeks of support classes held in schools during the short holidays, for example in February or at Easter. Volunteer teachers, paid specifically for those hours, would provide catch-up or practice lessons. The scheme would simply be expanded, he explained on the Télématin programme.

Geffray argued on France 2 that people cannot protest to defend the national character of the bac and then suggest starting to unpick it.

The minister also stressed that the blockades were illegal and threatened those behind them with disciplinary sanctions. According to the ministry, 31 of 3,700 high schools were blocked at 9.30am on Monday: a minority, although the movement has paralysed many schools for several weeks.

Head teacher taken to hospital in Bègles

On Monday morning, at around 7.30am, tension escalated outside the Émile-Combes vocational high school in Bègles, in the Gironde. Hooded individuals, around fifteen according to a witness quoted by AFP, around thirty according to the town hall, set fires in front of the school's two gates and then threw projectiles. One of them hit the head teacher on the head.

He was taken to hospital, but his condition was not giving cause for major concern, according to a source close to the investigation. Two members of the security forces were slightly injured. Four people were arrested, and the Bordeaux education authority says it will file a complaint. The town hall described a chaotic scene, a few hundred metres from a primary school. The high school was closed.

Worry in the classroom

On the ground, final-year students are worried about falling behind, especially in their specialist subjects. The Union syndicale lycéenne, a high school students' union, is calling for an exceptional reduction of the syllabus and the exam this year, and said on Sunday it hoped for €10 billion and the abolition of Parcoursup, the university admissions platform. On the university side, the Union étudiante has launched a petition for adjustments to end-of-term exams, signed by nearly 6,500 people by Monday morning.

Some teachers say they are ready to adapt the exams, pointing out that this was done in 2022. The minister, for his part, acknowledges that worry dominates among students, parents and teachers.

What next

The Prime Minister is receiving representatives of high school and university students on Monday afternoon, ahead of a first working meeting on reforming Parcoursup, which is at the heart of young people's anger. Student organisations have warned that they will keep up the mobilisation if the announcements disappoint them.