ROME – Crowds of students gathered at the Colosseum and in city squares across the country on Friday to protest the Jobs Act and Education reform.

  Authorities estimate that around 20,000 students took part in the demonstration in Rome, with many high school students amongst them. The march began in Piazza della Repubblica and was due to come to an end in Trastevere.

  Almost 100 separate demonstrations were due to take place across the country, in Milan over 2,000 students had taken to the streets, according to police, whilst several hundred protestors were reported in Turin, Palermo and Cagliari.  

  The National Union of Students organised the protests, which gained momentum on social media under the twitter hashtag #10ottstudentiinpiazza or “Oct. 10 Students in the squares”. In a statement, the union defined their aims as “to ask for a different school, a different university, a different country, to say that we are the beauty of this country and we can no longer allow ourselves to live with this instability, where we are deprived of our rights.”

  Coordinator of the National Union of Universities, Gianluca Scuccimarra, said “it’s high time that the political system takes some responsibility and gives some real answers to a precarious generation who are being robbed of their future.”

  Protestors in Rome demonstrated bitter resentment against the political hierarchy, with one protestor saying, “We are here above all to say to Prime Minister Renzi that good education is not made of his papers and his proposals but of us, us who get up every morning to go into these old buildings with broken desks.”

  Scuccimara foresaw further protests, highlighting a planned workers’ march on Oct. 25, and warning that students would once again take to the streets to challenge the government’s agenda of reform.