Police clash with school protesters in Netherlands

Mounted riot police charged hundreds of pupils demonstrating over plans to increase school hours today.

The clash, in Amsterdam’s central Museum Square, came after police were pelted with rocks, bottles and apples.

Police also turned a water canon on the youngsters. Two officers suffered minor injuries and 15 people were arrested.

Pupils overturned a small car, then set fire to petrol leaking from it. Others knocked over bicycles or hurled them at police, and exploded large firecrackers.

One pupil was arrested and put into a police van, but others grabbed his coat and pulled him out.

Plainclothes officers dragged him back to the van by his hair, and arrested several others.

Demonstrators spread the word to join protests with emails text messages.

Elsewhere in the country pupils threw eggs at the entrance to the parliament building in The Hague and at the headquarters of NOS, the national broadcaster, in Hilversum.

The unrest was in response to an extra 26 hours in the classroom annually, which the Education Ministry said was needed to raise standards and help pupils “master lessons.”

They claim that the schools were merely forcing them to spend more time in “study halls” to do homework, but no teaching took place.

“There’s no oversight, it’s complete nonsense” Kyra Esperbe, 16, said at the Amsterdam demonstration.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende criticised the pupils saying: “As a student, you can draw attention to the quality of lessons, but what has happened is wrong.”