Students block entrance to Paris high school to protest school system

And all across France, protestors, the majority of them students,

continue taking to the streets to voice their concerns over the conditions of

schools across the nation.

The education minister condemns the destruction and violence brought on

by demonstrators when meeting with personnel at a high school.

High schoolers in France are back at the barricades this week in a series of

protests that is rattling the government of President Emmanuel

Macron.

A student and teacher movement that began in mid-September

at a school in the southern outskirts of Paris triggered by

the perceived inequalities, lack of faculty and poor facilities in

disadvantaged neighbourhoods has struck a cord nationwide.

Class strikes, blockades and demonstrations spread to other schools in the

Parisian suburbs and then the rest of the country, with similar protests

sprouting in smaller towns.

Schools are vandalised, with some 80 administrators

and 170 pupils reportedly injured.

In Paris, a large group of young people were seen damaging a storefront

during a protest.

At the Voltaire High School in Paris, students block the entrance,

singing the French national anthem,

as passing motorists honk in support.

The head of the national high school student's association says the protest will

"take as long as it takes" to ensure budget and real commitments

and investments from the government.

He says high school students across France have been making

similar demands for "decades" but they "haven't felt heard"

and now sees blocking their schools as the "only way" to express themselves.

Education Minister, Edouard Geffray, speaking to a small group at a high school

in Guyancourt, calls out the "acts of unspeakable violence" around the student movement

which he says has deeply impacted the educational institutions.

With some 500 schools closed as of Monday, the minister vows to reopen them

and expresses support for members of staff who had been targeted during violent protests.

He says educational personnel would need to tackle issues of replacing teachers, dealing with

infrastructure and school timetables, all matters that are at the heart of the protest.