“It's a good secondary school as long as you don't wear a headscarf.” 'Imène' – not her real name – is a pupil at Victor-Hugo, one of three secondary schools or lycées in Marseille categorised as priority establishments for the southern city in terms of funding and development. Since the start of the current academic year she has been summoned in to see school management four times after her outfits were judged by senior staff and some teachers to be “Islamic”. Under a 2004 French law the wearing of “conspicuous” religious symbols is banned in the country's schools. “I no longer know what to wear,” she says.
Imène concedes that the first time she was called in she was wearing an abaya, the robe-like dress worn by many women in the Muslim world. “But not the other times,” she points out. On one of those other occasions she wore a dress bought at a major clothes store. “It has a slit down the side so I wore a skirt underneath, as it's ugly with leggings,” she says. “But even that wasn't accepted. Each time I put it on I got comments. They even said to watch out for me, as if I were a danger...”
During one such meeting with school management in February the female deputy headteacher asked her to take off her dress in her office, according to Imène's own account and what she said at the time in SMS messages to a close friend. “I was shocked and refused,” she says. “My dress isn't marked 'Islam'.” The situation has had an impact on how Imène views the school and she says she would like to move to another establishment. But she fears that her current school's management will “put something on my report and that will harm me”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Imène is not the only pupil to feel stressed by similar comments. Eighteen-year-old 'Sabrina' – not her real name – says she is no longer free to choose her own clothes. The teenager was also called in for a meeting after wearing a dress which “was long but which was not an abaya”. She says: “I explained the difference to them but they didn't understand.” On that occasion she had to leave school to go home and get changed. “I felt humiliated. I didn't have the house keys and no one was home. So because I didn't want to miss my test I had to go to my neighbour's and borrow an outfit.”
Three girls at the school acknowledge that they have worn an abaya at least once. But they say they were repeatedly called in to see senior staff about other outfits that were also judged to be religious in nature. These summonses to meet management occurred from September to March, with the largest number taking place at the start of the academic year. Internally, the school says such actions are justified following a letter sent out by the Ministry of Education in September on the issue of school wear. Ministry directives on the issue were then collated in a circular signed by education minister Pap Ndiaye last November.
The September letter, which was sent to the heads of regional education authorities, sets out “certain points on the wearing of symbols and clothing as defined by the law of March 15th 2004”. It says that long black dresses, abayas and qamis – long robes for men – are considered to be clothing liable to indicate conspicuous religious affiliation, and are thus banned. The same goes for “symbols and clothing whose wearing only shows religious affiliation by virtue of the pupil's behaviour”. The banning of these symbols and clothes relates to “the conspicuous nature of the expression and not the symbol in itself”.
So how does one determine if the symbol or the clothing that a pupil is wearing indicates that they have chosen to express religious affiliation? The ministry itself says that one has to consider for how long the pupil wears the symbol or clothing, and how “persistent” they are in their “refusal to remove it whatever the circumstances”.
Two new posts created to monitor headscarf wearing
It is the interpretation of these instructions that is causing tensions at the lycée Victor Hugo. The focus of management and some teachers is on those pupils who remove their headscarf in the morning before entering the school premises. An internal email in September, seen by Mediapart, shows that two new education assistant posts (AEDs) were created, with the new staff given the task of watching the entrance hall to the school to look out for the wearing of headscarves.
Some pupils say they have since received comments, even when trying to conform to the rules. In particular, they say they have been hauled in to see senior staff or have been subject to comments that they consider “stereotypical and racist”. Their complaints were first highlighted by the political website Révolution permanente in February this year.
“When you got to school the headteacher was at the front, looking from top to toe at all the girls in headscarves. When a girl wore a dress or an ensemble outfit, he would say to them: 'We need to have a chat, stand to one side',” recalls 'Maria', not her real name. In September 2022 the headteacher and his deputy called in Maria and four others to see them. All wear a headscarf outside the school. On that day one of them was wearing an abaya and the others each wore trousers and tops of the same colour, or as part of a suit. The meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, was recorded and Mediapart has heard this audio recording. “I have nothing against Islam, against you, against anyone, quite the contrary,” the headteacher tells them. “But firstly, I'm obliged to ensure the law is respected, and secondly I must prepare you in the best way for your social and workplace integration.” A little later he says: “I don't want you staying in the house with ten kids making couscous, tagine and samosas.”
'My dears'
The headteacher's words were intended to be kindly, but the young women do not hide their unease. “We're going to have nightmares at night,” says one of them. “I'm going to call the SOS service for mistreated pupils...” says the headteacher ironically, before adding: “No, don't exaggerate!” Maria recalls: “Lots of times he was saying stuff and we were all looking at each other as in 'what's he saying?'”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The conversation is interspersed with words in Arabic that the headteacher drops in randomly. He regularly calls the pupils “my dears” and explains that if they want to wear a headscarf at work it will be “difficult”. To one of the pupils who says she wants to work in marketing, he says: “But, that's the peak ...marketing! Marketing! My dear, already, that piercing, you're forgetting that. And it's also Chanel suits. It's suits and skirts!”.
The discussion touches on both the young women's professional aspirations and the legitimacy of wearing the headscarf outside school or the workplace. The headteacher tells them the story of a pupil “who wore clothes like that, who badmouthed people on the estate and who wore a thong underneath”. He speaks randomly about the situation of women in Iran, of women in the Comoros where women “don't dress like that: they have pretty boubous [editor's note, wide-sleeved robe] in all colours”. And after asking one of the women about her origins, to which she replies “Algerian”, he proceeds to speak about the “Chaoui [people] from the mountains”, the female inhabitants of Oran and the “Kabyle” people from that North African nation.
Shortly afterwards he says: “You're not in the village [editor's note, i.e. in the North African countryside] or in the Emirates.” He then adds: “If you go back to the time of the Prophet – if I tell you this I'm going to startle you but I guarantee to you it's true – originally the women who wore a veil were prostitutes.” Maria recalls: “That particularly shocked me. For me, that implied that we'd done something bad and that we put on the headscarf to conceal ourselves.”
What if your husband doesn't want to be a Muslim? You get out your knife and then you slice the merguez and put it in the couscous.
This meeting took place from 8am to 9am even though the pupils had lessons then. It ended with a question from the headteacher over the possibility that the young women might marry a non-Muslim. “What if your husband doesn't want to be a Muslim?” he asks. “If not, don't worry, you get out your knife and then you slice the merguez [sausage] and put it in the couscous, as in Tunisia.”
An internal report seen by Mediapart indicates that after this meeting one of the pupils was in tears, because she no longer knew how she was going to dress. Two others were in a “state of astonishment following some striking comments that were made during the meeting”.
In November 2022 the school's branches of the CGT Éducation and Sud Éducation trade unions, backed by all the education staff elected to the school administration board, wrote a letter alerting the regional education authority about the situation at the school. But despite two reminders, the unions and staff received no response.
When approached, the education authority did not respond to Mediapart's detailed questions. It simply stated that it continued to have “full and total support for the management team which has been subject to pressures and to totally unjustified accusations, even threats, over which formal complaints have been made, simply for applying the law and ensuring that the law is respected inside the establishment”.
The prosecution authorities in Marseille meanwhile confirmed that in March they had received several formal complaints from the management team at lycée Victor Hugo. These referred to “damage, graffiti containing insults as well as threats and defamation in relation to the headteacher of this institution,” said the prosecution authorities. They added: “At this stage it seems that the origins of events set out in the complaints from management would most likely be a social conflict inside the establishment as well the refusal of management to authorise female pupils to wear the headscarf inside the establishment.”
A divided staffroom
The situation at the school is certainly complicated. Some of the education assistants (AEDs) have been taking part in a rolling strike since January 16th demanding that action be taken against the headteacher, as well as the reinstatement of colleagues who have been suspended or whose contracts have not been renewed. Some of those colleagues had shown their support for the pupils shocked by the school management's attitude. One female school librarian was suspended for having held up a banner with the words: “Lycée Victor-Hugo. Rat on your sexist/racist headteacher.”
Some teachers, who asked to remain anonymous, have told Mediapart about what they call a “very tense” atmosphere inside the school, with a “very divided” staffroom. “You have the feeling that you can no longer speak out loud,” they say. Their colleagues accuse them of spreading rumours and of running the risk of creating a similar scenario to that surrounding the murder of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020.
The headteacher, his deputy and the teachers and administrative staff involved did not respond to questions from Mediapart.
In a written response on April 13th the union representing school management staff, the Syndicat National des Personnels de Direction de l’Éducation nationale (SNPDEN-Unsa), first of all expressed regret that “the questions addressed [editor's note, by Mediapart to management staff] relate to a large extent to the staff themselves, their background, their personal beliefs, even their families” (see black box below).
On the substantive issue the union said: “[Secularism] imposes strict neutrality on public sector workers and guarantees, first and foremost, freedom of conscience and expression for those who use the public education service, parents and pupils. The 2004 law partially restricts this religious freedom for pupils. This has calmed the situation in the vast majority of cases.”
In the meantime several female pupils to whom Mediapart spoke say they are now anxious about attending lessons. And some pupils - and teachers too - say they would like to move to another school.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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