Mohammad Asif Iqbal
New Delhi, India
maiqbaldelhi@gmail.com
According to a BBC report, students in Paris are protesting on the streets for better educational reforms. Four-hundred-and-forty people, mostly minors, have been arrested and 76 injured as a wave of school protests over overcrowded classes and teacher shortages spreads across France so far in these demonstrations, officials say.
The demonstrations began in Paris last week but have escalated to cities including Dijon, Lyon, Strasbourg, Lille and Marseille, with teenagers blockading their schools for days. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said while some of the students’ demands were legitimate what worried him was the violence. He spoke of one young man having lost the use of part of his hand after firing a mortar firework. The dozens hurt since the start of protests included both pupils and staff, he said.
Secondary school students’ union USL says as many as 400 of France’s 3,700 lycées for 15-18 year-olds have been blockaded and it has called for further action on Thursday, including at universities.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that in June 4, 2026 clashes broke out between protesters and police in Brussels, as a demonstration against planned reforms to part of Belgium’s education sector turned violent.
Belgium’s French Community government, which oversees French-language education, plans to increase annual tuition fees for higher education to €1,194 ($1,280) from €835 for the majority of students. And other proposed measures include requiring teachers with pupils in the final years of secondary school to take on two extra classroom hours per week without additional pay, and revising tenure rules.
one teacher who was attended the protest, told to Belgian broadcaster VRTNWS that “We will have to work more for the same wages, and working conditions will deteriorate, with more people having larger classes”,
On the other hand, in India, for the past few months a new wave of student protests is spreading across India as schoolchildren increasingly take to the streets to demand safer buildings, qualified teachers, clean drinking water, electricity, adequate classroom facilities and better food.
The protests, reported across at least 10 states since late July, have been driven largely by students at government-run schools, many of which serve children from economically and socially marginalised communities. The demonstrations are emerging only weeks after a nationwide youth movement led largely by Gen Z challenged government over examination failures, unemployment and problems within the education system.
The latest protests have been described as the beginning of a Gen Alpha movement, with children as young as six challenging teachers and government officials over conditions in their schools.
At a government primary school in Samuhi Bhatpurwa village in Uttar Pradesh, 122 students refused to attend classes on August 22 until authorities promised to replace their deteriorating school building.
The school had been left partly in ruins after a wall collapsed in 2023, severely injuring a girl. The children said they had repeatedly asked authorities for a new building because they feared the structure could collapse again.
You know, India is one of the world’s largest education systems, with about 247 million students attending roughly 1.5 million schools. Around 70 percent are operated by federal, state or local governments. Yet government data shows that more than 100,000 schools have only one teacher for all grades, affecting about 2.9 million children. The country also has thousands of schools officially classified as having no enrolled students.
In light of the situation described above, it is evident that countries across the globe are facing student protests. Yet, the question arises: why are students in various nations protesting today, and why are governments ignoring their demands?
The reality is that the public is dissatisfied with the current education system. People are deeply concerned about the future of their children and the country; they are troubled by the prevailing system, administrative affairs, official measures, and the issues currently plaguing the sector.
Amidst these circumstances, the public is also distressed because education is becoming increasingly expensive, unemployment is rising, and basic needs are going unmet; governments do not appear to be functioning as welfare states, and the people are grappling with a life of hardship rather than finding relief. This is likely why the younger generation—who, like their parents, are affected by domestic struggles—desires a better present and future. They want to ensure that they do not face the same hardships in the near future that currently plague their parents and families. It is for this reason that they are taking to the streets to protest, raising their voices, articulating their grievances, and urging the government to pay attention to these genuine issues.
Therefore, governments should also listen to the voices of today’s youth with a positive mindset and pay attention to the issues they raise. By responding with empathy, authorities should improve the education system so that the youth not only achieve success and progress but also ensure a bright future for the nation—enabling the country to advance and its people to lead prosperous lives. Since the current era belongs to Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they should not be overlooked.
About the writer:
Mohammad Asif Iqbal is an Indian columnist and freelance journalist from New Delhi. He has extensively written on rural India, his notable interests are poverty, structural inequities, caste discrimination, socio-economic and educational issue of Indian society. He has written more than 300 columns on the issues.
