French Students Demand Better Schools as Budget Falls by 20%

France's education budget has dropped by 20 percent since 2017, according to data from French economist Lucas Chancel. This decline has led to overcrowded classrooms, unreplaced teacher absences, and dilapidated school facilities. Students have taken to the streets demanding better education and a brighter future. The protests, which began in mid-September, have grown to involve 410,000 people nationwide, including 110,000 in Paris. The government has struggled to address these demands, as it faces a severe fiscal crisis and planned budget cuts.

The French government has responded by imposing curfews and deploying police to crack down on protesters. President Emmanuel Macron has blamed ultra-left groups for trying to ‘bring down the Republic’ and threatened accountability for those involved in violence. However, a meeting between Macron and student representatives failed to defuse tensions, as protesters called for further mobilisation until the government presents concrete actions.

The French government has defended the budget cuts, but a report by economist Thomas Piketty noted that while public debt has increased, the country’s private wealth has also grown from 300 percent to 600 percent of GDP, with extreme concentration among the wealthiest. People aged 60 and older own 60 percent of the country’s wealth, according to a January 2026 review by OFCE. This highlights a deeper issue of wealth distribution, which has been central to current French politics.

France’s annual budget deficit is forecast at 5.4 percent of GDP, well above the European Union ceiling of 3 percent. The country’s state expenditures consume roughly 57 percent of its total GDP, including 14 percent allocated to worker pensions. A government report noted that nearly one-third of some ministries’ budgets pay for the pensions of retired civil servants, reducing spending on education and other priorities.

In his opinion column for Le Monde, Piketty wrote that reinvesting in education and health should be the government’s priority. ‘Reinvesting in these sectors today is not simply a matter of equality between regions or social classes,’ he wrote, highlighting that such reinvestment would help an economy produce greater output by using fewer resources. Snoussi shared a similar view, saying the government has a simple choice: invest, or step aside.

Fatas, the economics professor, noted that while there are a lot of good things people in France want the government to do, it is important to prioritise which sector requires funding. ‘The government spending [in France] is the largest among advanced economies, so there is little room to just spend the way out of this.’ France faces a political paralysis when it comes to reform decisions, and this is the reason why it is in a more difficult situation than others.