French authorities on Monday enforced a newly-announced ban on the abaya Muslim dress for women in schools, with over 500 establishments under scrutiny as children across the country returned to class.
The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.
The move gladdened the political right but the hard-left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties, RFI reports.
"Things are going well this morning. There is no incident for the moment, we will continue all day to be vigilant so that the students understand the meaning of this rule," said Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne as she visited a school in northern France.
But she added that there was a "certain number" of schools where girls had arrived wearing an abaya.
"Some young girls agreed to remove it. For the others, we will have discussions with them, and use educational approaches to explain that there is a law that is being applied," she added.
The education minister Gabriel Attal told France's TF1 TV last month that pupils’ religion shouldn’t be identified just by looking at them.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.
"When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn't be able to identify the pupils' religion just by looking at them," Gabriel Attal told TF1 TV, adding: "I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools."
The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools.
The garment was being increasingly worn in schools, leading to a political divide over them, with right-wing parties pushing for a ban while those on the left have voiced concerns for the rights of Muslim women and girls.
"Secularism means the freedom to emancipate oneself through school," Attal told TF1, arguing the abaya is "a religious gesture, aimed at testing the resistance of the republic toward the secular sanctuary that school must constitute."
The hard left has accused the government of centrist President Emmanuel Macron of trying with the abaya ban to compete with Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally and shifting further to the right.
Education Minister Gabriel Attal told RTL radio that authorities had identified 513 schools that could be affected by the ban at the start of the school year.
There are around 45,000 schools in France, with 12 million pupils going back to school on Monday.
He said work had been done ahead of the start of the school year to see in which schools this could present a problem, adding that trained school inspectors would be placed in certain schools.
Attal however said he was against imposing a ban on parents wearing clothes that had religious significance when they accompanied their children on school outings.
"There is a difference between what happens in school and what happens outside school. What matters to me is what happens in school," he said.
Some leading figures on the right have called on the government to make children wear school uniform in state schools and Attal said he would announce a uniform trial in the autumn.
A law introduced in March 2004 banned "the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" in schools.
This includes large crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.
Unlike headscarves, abayas -- a long, baggy garment worn to comply with Islamic beliefs on modest dress -- occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.
In 2010, France banned the wearing of full-face veils in public which provoked anger in France's five million-strong Muslim community.
France has enforced a strict ban on religious signs at schools since the 19th Century, including Christian symbols such as large crosses, in an effort to curb any Catholic influence from public education.
It has been updating the law over the years to reflect its changing population, which now includes the Muslim headscarf and Jewish kippa, but abayas have not been banned outright.
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