Education minister says 24 schools have been burnt or ransacked and 78 staff members injured since student unrest began last month

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More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for another week of student protests.

Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.

Government struggling to deal with worst crisis in months after being taken by surprise by massive demonstrations

As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.

“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”