France school closures will leave between 400 and 500 schools fully or partly shut on Monday, education minister Édouard Geffray announced on Sunday, as the country prepares for a second week of student protests.

Security conditions behind the closures

Geffray said lesson suspensions were ordered because security conditions "have not been fulfilled". He reported that 24 schools had been burnt or ransacked and 78 education staff members injured. Staff were deliberately targeted, he said, describing it as "something we have never seen before". Monday's closure count will be similar to Friday's, and the government plans a "partial, progressive return to lessons".

A week of barricades and arrests

Authorities say the movement began at a Paris school on 17 September and then spread across the capital and the rest of France. Since then:

• •Thousands of teenagers have staged widespread demonstrations and erected barricades against what they described as underfunding and neglect of the education system.
• •Clashes with riot police left hundreds of people injured and led to more than 5,000 arrests, most of them minors.
• •Images of burning barricades and of police using teargas, batons and other methods to disperse protests have dominated TV news coverage.

The grievances driving the protests

• •Overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings, poor teacher pay, staff absences and an unequal system where social background determines success.
• •An opaque and difficult online system for university applications, as well as sweltering temperatures in classrooms during heatwaves.
• •What protesters called state disengagement from secondary education, citing leaks, cockroaches, collapsed ceilings and decayed buildings.
• •Excessively long school days and a lack of teaching staff.

The government called the grievances legitimate but condemned what it labelled "urban violence".

Infiltration claims and what comes next

Geffray said activists, particularly from the far left, had infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves and engaged in extreme violence, warning that this poses a risk to both staff and students.

The unrest has confronted President Emmanuel Macron with his worst crisis in months and caught the government by surprise. On Friday a 59-year-old teacher was doused with gasoline and struck during a protest in La Ciotat, a town on the southern coast between Marseille and Toulon; police detained a 16-year-old over the assault on Sunday.

Last week trade unions held a day of strikes to pressure new prime minister Sébastien Lecornu to rethink budget cuts and consider a form of wealth tax on the super-rich. The CGT union has exhorted workers to sustain the pressure with demonstrations this week.

Protest organisers have called renewed demonstrations for Tuesday, saying the government has failed to produce "concrete measures".