More than 360 schoolchildren and 245 staff have been injured since the protests started. The government first responded with a security crackdown, mobilizing riot police outside schools across France amid clashes that led to injuries from police weaponry, including children who lost a hand or an eye.
France is entering the eighth week of an unprecedented schools crisis, the biggest youth protest movement in decades, with hundreds of high schools barricaded or shut and teachers pressing for a return to class.
Since the end of September, students have blocked schools to demand repairs to dilapidated buildings, more replacement teachers, a solution to overcrowded classes and more equality in the university application system.
So many weeks of classes have been missed that a return to ordinary teaching is no longer straightforward. Online lessons have rarely fully replaced what pupils have lost. Many teenagers are at home in their fourth or fifth week with no school.
Thousands of pupils in baccalauréat exam years have missed up to 150 hours of teaching at schools barricaded or closed regularly since the end of September.
One school has been at the center of the protests since a 16-year-old from a different school lost the use of his eye at the end of September. He was allegedly struck by a police rubber bullet on the pavement outside.
Police are increasingly stationed outside schools. In central Paris this week, officers hit students' hands with truncheons to make them loosen their grip on bins used in barricades.
Fireworks have been fired outside schools and inside classrooms in different parts of France. One teacher said that in recent weeks firework mortars had been set off, sometimes aimed at staff, that fires had been started in bins, and that materials for molotov cocktails had been found in a building opposite the school.
The government and teachers' unions have said that individuals committing violence outside or inside schools were not the same people as students peacefully protesting for education rights.
Over the past two weeks, the government argued that its offer to decrease some class sizes and review the university application platform meant the movement was coming to an end. Teachers' unions have accused the government of letting the protests fester into an increasingly dangerous mood of violence.
"We need a de-escalation of violence and a path back to education,"said Roy, a teacher whose school has been at the center of the protests."We need to get back to class to teach our pupils again, some of whom are booing us,"Roy said.
A teacher who demonstrated outside a central Paris police station this week, after one of her pupils was arrested, said there was"absolute uncertainty over how we can return to proper teaching.".
At a high school in the Créteil area, an English teacher said:"I feel proud of my students' peaceful protests."The children demonstrating are asking for the same thing teachers have wanted for years: more resources and more dignity in teaching environments.
Teachers' strikes have not been listened to, whereas students see they are having an impact. Some pupils approach school, see the police, panic and go away because they cannot bear the atmosphere with police outside.
On a school barricade with dozens of pupils this week, one student said:"It's the only way the government will listen."His 17-year-old friend said:"Any progress that has been won in France has been achieved through people demonstrating on the street."One pupil brought masks and swimming goggles in a tote bag in case of police teargas.
Over the past two months, hundreds of high schools have been barricaded with wheelie bins or shut amid security fears. For teachers who want pupils back in class, the eighth week opened with no agreed path back.