High school students have walked out of class to condemn Pauline Hanson in mass protests across the country on Thursday.

Hundreds of young people gathered in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other cities carrying placards calling out racism and branding Hanson ‘Temu Trump’.

A giant effigy of Hanson’s head, using orange feathers to depict the One Nation leader’s hair, bobbed over the crowd near Sydney’s Town Hall.

Other signs read: “Students say no to Hanson” and “One Nation does not represent Australia”.

Young people have called out racism at rallies across Australia. Photo: AAP

The protests were co-ordinated by the National Union of Students in every major city and several smaller locations across the country on Thursday afternoon.

Say No to Pauline Hanson rally flyers distributed by organisers the National Union of Students included calls to “fight against racism” and “stand up against the far right”.

“Pauline Hanson actually doesn’t stand for things that benefit students’ lives …(and) a lot of students are galvanised by that,” union general secretary Akash Nagarajan told AAP.

The party’s primary vote has ballooned in the last 12 months, sitting at 26 per cent in early August according to the latest Roy Morgan poll.

Responding on social media, Hanson said students should instead be protesting the cost-of-living crisis and stagnant national wage growth.

“The Labor Greens governments is selling out your future, and you’ll inherit a weaker, poorer and less safe country,” she wrote.

“Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you.”

Students marched in Adelaide, with a placard of Pauline Hanson smooching Gina Rinehart. Photo: InDaily

Further calls for students not to sideline their studies on Thursday came from politicians including federal Education Minister Jason Clare and Victorian Premier Ben Carroll.

“If people want to protest on the weekend, then fill your boots, but I want you at school when school is on, learning,” Clare told reporters on Wednesday.

Despite being urged not to skip class, Melbourne high school student Jules Arpula said there was “nothing more important” for students to do on Thursday.

“We refuse to just adapt to the new ‘normal’ of Hansonism,” she said.

School students gathered in Adelaide. Photo: InDaily

Hanson’s track record shows she has voted against education policies such as free TAFE, increasing funding for public schools and reducing student debt,  Nagarajan said.

The 72-year-old used her June National Press Club address to call for a monocultural Australia before appearing on a podcast hosted by British far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson during a work trip to the UK last month.

Victorian One Nation MP Rickie-Lee Tyrrell said the suggestion her party was racist was “false” and accused the Socialist Party of misleading students.

“These people are telling these children false information, we are not racist,” she told reporters at state parliament on Thursday morning.

“If you have a look at our followers, our members, our candidates, there is a diverse range of people.”

A walkout was one of the most effective ways for students, some of whom are too young to vote, to voice their dissent, Monash University senior politics lecturer Benjamin Moffitt said.

The planned rallies will aim to implore a relatively large group of Australians “flirting with the idea of voting One Nation” to question their choices, he said.

The protests were scheduled for 1pm in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra and 2pm in Melbourne.

-with AAP