France reports largely peaceful protests

For more on that, let's bring in France 24's Jamie Smith-Maillet. Jamie, good to see you. You were in Paris covering that for us yesterday. What was the overall feeling about the student-led movement and where it stands? Well, as you said, the overall feeling and the message from yesterday was that it was a relatively peaceful demonstration, above all, beyond the end of it, where there were some outbursts of violence in general. But the message I was hearing from people on the street is a message that we've been hearing now. For a number of weeks, and that is from a lot of young people who were in the crowds there about the questions around education, about those demands we've been hearing now for over a month, and essentially that there has still not been enough concrete measures placed there on the table. Now, what I heard from people on the street yesterday as well is that the government, although coming forward with measures, is more talk rather than action, and there was concern that these measures would be carried. ...out or carried through. There's also been a sense of solidarity with the students in the movement, joining in with workers' unions and talking about this movement continuing into later on this week and later on into the month of November. And those calls as well have been continued as well for continued blockades of both schools and universities. Just before the October break, as schools go back tomorrow, some 200 schools were blockaded. Just as the holidays started versus around 400 at the beginning of the month of October and now calls for potential blockades and further mobilisation into this week. So it looks like the movement still has significant momentum. So let's wind back a little. What were some proposals put forth by the government and what have the reactions been from the student groups? Well, what we saw there during the holidays just last week was the French Prime Minister Sébastien Le Cornu, who came forward with a series of measures and really looking back at them, we could ask, are these concessions that cut it? Having a look through them, these were essentially what he suggested was that it would be a reform of university admission system, which was a big demand from students, saying that it was lacking in transparency. That was something that's planned for 2027 to 2028. 15,000 additional places in university to plug the gap there for students as well. Class sizes in schools being capped at 28 for certain school classes within lycées. And also loans of around 5 billion for renovation within schools. 500 additional teaching positions as well. And student grants in line with inflation. The government says these are... ...concrete, clear measures, but ultimately what we've heard from student unions is it's not enough, it's not soon enough, and clearly they're still lining out 10 key points with 10 billion euros that they want to see on the table. And that comes back to this message of continued mobilisation and blockade on Tuesday potentially in both high schools and universities, but also going forward to Thursday as well. And on Thursday, we have... A wider mobilization and potential for a general strike with unions representing workers around the country and also this idea of a continuity of the movement. So it looks like the movement is not quite yet over and that is certainly set to continue. Yeah, we can certainly expect more protests of the sort in the next few weeks at least. Jamie, thank you very much.