PARIS: French students kept up the pressure on the government on Tuesday, blocking the entrances to dozens of high schools and holding protests across the country to demand better learning conditions.

Student protests in France since September have spiralled into larger cost-of-living demonstrations, some marked by fringe violence and accusations of police brutality.

The unrest comes before elections to replace President Emmanuel Macron next year.

With the European Union’s second-biggest economy under pressure to rein in debt, the government has limited scope to appease protesters through additional spending.

Forty-nine of the country’s 3,700 high schools for 15 to 18-year-olds were blockaded on Tuesday morning, the ministry said.

Leonore, an 18-year-old university student, was among those protesting in solidarity with the high-school movement in Paris.

“We’ve been mobilized from the start, we’re not giving up. A little rain isn’t going to stop us,” she said, refusing to give her surname.

In the southern city of Toulouse, Laurent Besson-Imbert, a special needs support assistant at one high school, also took to the streets.

He said public servants like himself had not received a pay raise in 25 years.

“How are we supposed to put up with that?” he told AFP, adding that some workers in public education lived in poverty.

The government has announced measures, including the gradual replacement of an online selection platform to access higher education, as well as funds for some of the worst-off schools.

But students say this is not enough.

Unions are not happy either, with one leader saying on Monday that a government pledge to increase the minimum wage by 0.6 percent on top of a standard adjustment for inflation was “crumbs.”

They have called for a new day of strikes and protest on November 17.

Around 575,000 people demonstrated across the country during cost-of-living strikes and protests last Thursday, according to authorities. Unions put the number at 1.5 million.