Lyon (AFP) – Nearly a hundred principals and assistants gathered Monday in front of the charred door of a Lyon establishment to express their “weariness” in the face of the violence committed on the sidelines of the high school mobilization, calling for “a start” from students and their parents.

Published on: 09/11/2026 - 15:24

Every morning, "we are in front of our establishments, students throw trash cans or barriers at us and insult us: it seems like it has almost become routine," laments Isabelle Rhety, principal in Lyon and deputy academic secretary of the majority union SNPDEN-Unsa, to AFP.

“There must be awareness on the part of parents and students that we do not understand this mode of action, we do not support it. It is not their demands that are the problem, it is their way of doing things,” she adds.

At least 80 management staff gathered in front of the Edouard Herriot high school, in the very center of France's 3rd city, whose door was set on fire on Friday by the spread of a trash fire. This could have had “dramatic consequences”, according to the head of the school who had to evacuate 1,000 students through two secondary exits.

Like their students, the demonstrators had written demands in beautiful letters on pieces of cardboard: "dialogue makes the school, contempt destroys it...." or "when we target a school head, it is the school that we hit".

Taking each other's arms, the school heads then sang a Marseillaise, some of them not hiding their emotion.

"It's a moment of solidarity" because "the principal is a being of flesh and blood. He lives, he breathes, in any case, he tries. And when he is threatened, vilified, attacked, it has an impact on his integrity, both physical, moral and on his family", explained Damien Coursodon, principal of the Edouard Herriot high school and member of the national Independence and Direction office (iD-FO).

Asks him for “preventive operations around establishments” in order to “monitor” and “avoid violent groupings”.

Monday morning, another dozen establishments in the Lyon region remained affected by the high school movement with tensions affecting a handful of them and a total of eight arrests for mortar fire. Near Bordeaux, a principal was injured in the head by a projectile.

© 2026 AFP

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