On 21 September, pupils at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, south-east of Paris, staged a protest. They had a list of grievances. Classes were overcrowded and there was a shortage of teachers. They were also dismayed at the decaying state of some of the school buildings and the automated university admissions platform they feel deprives them of autonomy.

Pupils filmed the protest and uploaded the footage onto social media. It went viral. Across France, children in other secondary schools joined the protest. They aired the same complaints as their peers in Créteil – and more.

Some pupils described seeing rats in classrooms, others of enduring leaking ceilings and moldy walls. For many, memories of the summer heatwave were still painfully fresh. They remembered how they sat their exams in June in classrooms where the temperature topped 38°C. At one high school in Versailles pupils took their exams in an underground car park because it was the only cool place in town.

Schools have been firebombed, shops have been pillaged, a fire engine has been attacked

Schools have been firebombed, shops have been pillaged, a fire engine has been attacked

As the protests spread, so they became violent. At Saint-Exupéry school, pupils had demonstrated peacefully behind a barricade of wheelie bins. In other schools the bins were set ablaze and fireworks used as missiles. These acts of vandalism attracted the police and there were confrontations. They also attracted young men wearing hoodies and masks; young men who looked too big to be at school.

Last week the violence exploded. The statistics bear witness. More than 1,000 injured: 715 police officers, 215 pupils and 85 teaching staff.

Much of the savagery was uploaded, and it has horrified France. A policewoman chased along a Paris street and hurled to the ground; a policeman kicked unconscious by a gang of howling youths in Belfort; a woman in Marseille set on fire by a 15-year-old with an aerosol can as she told him to stop vandalizing a bus stop. On Monday, a 15-year-old boy had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade outside his school in Lens.

Schools have been........

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