‘We’re not asking for luxury’: school protesters in Paris suburb feel abandoned by French state

A sign reading ‘Education in peril – angry youth’ on the gates of the Lycée Blaise-Cendrars in Sevran. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

On a normal school day, Mohammed, 17, wakes at 6am, cares for his younger siblings to help his single mother who works as a security guard, then takes two crowded buses and a local train to get to his high school in Sevran, a low-income banlieue town in the suburbs north-east of Paris.

“There aren’t enough chairs or desks to go round, so some students have to stand up,” Mohammed said. “Classes can be so packed you can’t interact with the teacher. In this year’s heatwaves, it felt like 40 degrees in overcrowded classrooms with no shade or curtains. It was so hot my brain couldn’t function.”