By the Expat Gate editorial team · 6 October 2026.
For an expat parent, the politics matter less than another question: what does all this say about the quality of French schools, and can you tell in advance where your child will get a decent basic education?
What exactly is happening in French schools
The French press dates the current nationwide wave of protests to 21 September 2026, when students at an upper secondary school (lycée) in Créteil began a blockade over unfilled teaching posts.
Over the following weeks the movement spread first across the Paris suburbs, then across the whole country. By 5 October, classes had been disrupted at roughly 590 of France’s 3,700 lycées.
Students in different cities name similar problems: a shortage of teachers, no cover for absent ones, overcrowded classes, overloaded timetables and school buildings in poor condition.
Le Monde describes these demands in detail and notes that in state lycées more than 70% of classes have over 30 students, and about 20% have more than 35.
The problem of absent teachers is also confirmed by official statistics.
According to data from the French Ministry of Education, in the 2024/25 school year 9.8% of scheduled teaching hours did not take place in state lower and upper secondary schools. Teachers absent without cover accounted for 7.5 percentage points of that.
In the 10% of schools hit hardest, more than 15% of teaching time is lost.
At the start of the 2026/27 school year, a survey by the SNES-FSU union of more than a thousand schools found at least one missing teacher in 53% of them. Maths, French, and physics and chemistry came up especially often.
Students also regularly complain about the state of school buildings: leaks, poor ventilation, heating problems and extreme heat in summer.
It would be easy to dismiss such stories as isolated extreme cases. But a look at the French press shows the problem is much broader.
In a SNES-FSU study quoted by Le Monde, 78% of the lower and upper secondary schools surveyed reported rooms above 30 °C, and one in five above 33 °C. Some schools recorded temperatures of around 38 °C.
Yet France still has no single legal maximum or minimum temperature for school classrooms.
Complaints about the long school day are also well founded.
A timetable running from 8 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m. is entirely realistic in a French lycée. That does not necessarily mean ten hours of back-to-back lessons: there can be long gaps between classes. But for a teenager the result is the same: the whole day is spent at school.
After the lycée reform introduced combinations of specialist subjects, timetabling became more complicated, and the general inspectorate has previously criticised timetables as too dense and poorly balanced.
Can the geography of the protests tell you where education is better or worse
The protest map is almost useless for that.
The movement started in Créteil and was especially visible in the Île-de-France region, but then quickly spread to Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and other cities.
The fact that there are active protests does not automatically mean schools in that particular city are worse. How intense the protests are also depends on how active the students are, local organisations, social media and a tradition of school mobilisation.
At the same time, the regional differences within the French system really are very large.
The staffing situation is particularly difficult in the large education authorities (académies) of the Paris region.
For example, according to the Ministry of Education, 46% of all teachers in France’s state lower and upper secondary schools with only one year in their post work in just two académies: Créteil and Versailles.
This is an indirect sign of high staff turnover and of how hard it is to keep teachers.
But there is no simple division such as “the north is bad, the south is good” or “a big city is good, a small town is bad”.
The latest national tests from 2025 show, for example, that with a comparable social mix, lower secondary students in rural communes on average do slightly better in maths than students in towns and cities.
The Ministry of Education has also long recorded very strong regional differences, and the link between the size of a town and results varies from region to region.
Studies of France’s educational geography show that in Bretagne and Pays de la Loire the more favourable situation may be found in dense urban areas, while in Hauts-de-France and Grand Est good results also appear in outlying areas.
The practical takeaway for a family is fairly simple:
looking for “the best region in France for education” does not make much sense.
It is far more useful to follow the chain:
municipality → neighbourhood → school catchment area → specific school.
State and private schools
France has both state and private education, but the private sector is organised somewhat differently from what many foreigners are used to.
Most private schools are schools under contract with the state, known as privé sous contrat.
These schools must follow the national curriculum, and their teachers are subject to state oversight.
There are also fully independent private schools, hors contrat, with more freedom in how they organise teaching.
Even so, all private schools remain subject to state supervision.
On average, students at private schools get better results.
But that does not automatically mean the teaching is better.
The Ministry of Education shows a very large difference in social mix.
The average index of students’ social background, the IPS, is about 125 in private lycées under contract with the state, against 105 in state schools. More than nine out of ten private lycées have a socially advantaged student body.
These figures are published by the Ministry of Education itself.
In 2025, students entering private lycées under contract with the state did indeed show better results than students at state schools.
But Ministry data also show that a school’s social mix is in itself very closely linked to results.
So the formula “private school = good school” does not automatically work in France.
A good state school in a well-off area can be an excellent option. A private school may offer a more comfortable environment and better organised discipline, but part of its high results is often explained by selection and by the social mix of its students.
The same thing shows up in discussions among French parents.
Both positions come up regularly on Reddit: some families deliberately move from a state school to a private one because of discipline and the environment, while others see no point in driving a child across town to a private school if there is a good state option nearby.
Why the education situation has become so difficult
Take away the political arguments and several quite concrete causes remain.
Teacher shortages
France is finding it ever harder to recruit teachers and fill vacancies in certain subjects and areas.
Even in the latest recruitment exams not all places were filled, especially in maths, and physics and chemistry.
Official data on the teacher recruitment exams show that the problem persists.
The Senate and professional organisations link this, among other things, to how attractive the profession is, the level of pay and career prospects.
Another figure is telling: according to the international TALIS survey, only 4% of French teachers believe society values their profession.
These results are also published by the Ministry of Education.
More students, not necessarily more resources
According to Le Monde, there are fewer teachers in state secondary education today than in 2008, while there are about 250,000 more students.
Ageing buildings
The average French lycée building is now about 61 years old, and the average vocational school building 71 years old.
Only about 15% of school buildings were built or fully renovated after 2015.
More than a third of schools operate at or above their design capacity.
Responsibility for buildings is split between different levels of government: municipalities are responsible for primary schools, departments for lower secondary schools, and regions for lycées.
The Ministry of Education has no single complete database that would allow a quick assessment of the physical condition of all school buildings in the country.
Complicated timetables
After the lycée reform introduced the system of specialist subjects, timetabling became more complicated.
Because of subject combinations, students can end up with long gaps between classes and a very long school day.
So a teenager being at school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. is not at all unusual in France.
What students themselves say
Reddit is useful here not as a source of political opinions but as a way to see the everyday side of the problem.
In French discussions, students talk about leaking roofs, buckets under the leaks, classes of 32–34 people, a shortage of desks and chairs, bad toilets, cold in winter, heat in summer and awkward timetables.
On their own, such stories prove nothing.
But compared with data from the Ministry of Education, the unions and the French press, many of the complaints turn out to reflect systemic problems.
One more important theme keeps coming up in expat communities.
Families often choose the city and neighbourhood first, and only after moving start finding out which school their child will go to.
In discussions among expats in France, this regularly comes up as one of the unexpected features of the French system.
In France, doing things in that order can turn out to be a serious mistake.
Can you check a specific school in advance
Yes.
This is exactly where the French system gives parents quite a lot of useful data.
But France has no direct equivalent of the British Ofsted, where a school gets a simple public rating such as Outstanding or Good.
French schools go through a systematic evaluation on a roughly five-year cycle, but the results are not brought together into a single simple rating for parents.
The Conseil d’évaluation de l’École writes about the school evaluation system in more detail.
What the Ministry of Education does publish are other indicators.
IVAC and IVAL
For lower secondary schools (collèges) there is the IVAC system, for lycées IVAL.
It lets you look not only at the exam pass rate but also at the school’s so-called added value.
The idea is simple.
If a school shows high results, it matters whether that is because strong children from well-off families went there in the first place, or because the school really delivered better results than expected.
The ministry calculates expected results taking into account the students’ social and academic profile, and then compares them with the actual results.
The IVAC and IVAL methodology is explained in detail on the Ministry of Education website.
Check a specific lower secondary school on IVAC.
Check a specific lycée on IVAL.
IPS
Another useful indicator is the index of students’ social background, the IPS.
It shows a school’s social mix.
On its own the IPS says nothing about the quality of teaching, but it helps you understand the environment and compare neighbouring schools.
IPS data by school are available in the Ministry of Education’s open database.
School catchment area
For state lower secondary schools, your home address usually determines which school your child is assigned to.
The ministry publishes maps of school catchment areas (carte scolaire). For 2025, the open database covered 95 of 101 departments.
This means that in France choosing a flat or a house can also mean choosing a school.
What to check before choosing a home
For a family with a child, the order of steps should be the reverse of the usual one.
Not choosing a home first and then looking at the school.
First find out which school belongs to a specific address.
Then check:
- The IVAC or IVAL of that specific school.
- The gap between expected and actual results.
- The IPS and the social mix of the students.
- Class sizes.
- Information about unfilled posts and cover for absent teachers.
- The condition of the building.
- Recent local news about the school.
- Feedback from local parents’ associations, such as the FCPE.
- Nearby private schools under contract with the state, and their actual indicators.
So the most useful question is not:
“Is education in France good?”
But rather:
What kind of education will my child get if we live at this particular address?
The school protests have simply made that question much more visible.
If you are moving with children, go through our “Children and moving abroad” checklist, and if the whole family is moving, our checklist for moving as a family as well.
In the Expat Gate card for France, the country is ranked 38th of 97 in the August 2026 issue of the migration policy ranking, league B. The main diagnosis: every new employment contract requires its own work authorisation, and you cannot bring your family until eighteen months of residence.