French high school students have been blockading schools for more than two weeks, and the grievances are visceral: overcrowded classrooms, absent teachers who never get replaced, buildings with rodent infestations and no air conditioning during record heatwaves. More than 6,100 people have been arrested since the unrest began on September 21 in the Paris suburb of Créteil and spread nationwide. The protests converged on September 29 with a public sector strike against a proposed pay freeze in President Emmanuel Macron's 2027 budget, which targets €54 billion in savings. The numbers tell a specific story of adequacy without performance. France spent €199.2 billion on education in 2025 — 6.7 percent of GDP by the broad domestic-expenditure measure — up €2.4 billion from 2024. By the narrower Eurostat measure of public spending alone, France sits at 5.1 percent of GDP, joint 13th in Europe, above the EU average of 4.8 percent. Sweden leads at 7.3 percent; Ireland trails at 2.7 percent. Spending has more than doubled since 1980 in real terms, but as a share of GDP it has actually declined since the mid-1990s. The real friction is in what that money buys. About 11 percent of French secondary teachers are not fully qualified, against an OECD average of 9 percent for combined primary and secondary. Lower secondary classes average 26 students compared to 23 across the OECD. Only 4 percent of French teachers say their profession is valued by society — the lowest of any OECD country surveyed and far below the 22 percent average. The system fills vacancies with underqualified staff rather than leaving posts empty, which flatters headcount statistics while degrading quality. Secondary education absorbs the biggest share at €73.7 billion (37 percent of total), followed by primary at €60 billion (30 percent), higher education at €45.6 billion (23 percent), and adult/continuing education at €19.7 billion (10 percent). The allocation is not unusual for a European country, but it means the secondary sector where protests are concentrated is also the most expensive single line item — and the one with the worst teacher-qualification gap. Historical UNESCO data shows France's education spending slipped from 5.5 percent of GDP in 2017 to 5.3 percent in 2022. A brief spike to 5.7 percent in 2020 reflected the pandemic shrinking GDP, not actual new money. France was one of 14 European countries where the education share fell over that period. Norway and Denmark saw the steepest drops; Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic recorded the biggest rises. The fiscal context sharpens the stakes. The proposed 2027 budget's €54 billion savings package includes a civil service pay freeze expected to save about €2 billion. Unions view education spending as a frontline casualty. Meanwhile, France spent 11.9 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2022, one of the highest shares in Europe, and across the continent most governments spend more on education than defence but far less than on health. Education advocates are fighting not just for their slice but against the gravitational pull of healthcare costs in an aging society. What the students are describing — and what the data confirms — is a system where aggregate spending looks adequate but per-classroom outcomes are deteriorating. The money goes in at above-average levels; it comes out as below-average class sizes, underqualified teachers, and crumbling infrastructure. The extraction is structural: rising total expenditure masks falling investment intensity per student, per classroom, per building. The proposed pay freeze would accelerate the recruitment crisis that is already the system's weakest link.
