It’s been 18 days since we first reported on isolated cases of school protests at a high school in Rennes in Brittany, in Caen in Normandy and Villeneueve d’Asque on the suburbs of Lille. The complaints were similar in theme: overloaded timetables, staffing problems, poor facilities. The protests spread to Saint Denis and Creteil on the outskirts of Paris days later; one interview with the students was seen 1.4 million times on TikTok. It gathered pace, and morphed into what we’ve seen throughout the week: hundreds of protests, some peaceful, some with deeply distressing scenes.