FATHIMA stood outside her lycée chatting and joking with friends. She paused briefly to lift a long, beige scarf off her head and then walked into the playground — an excited teenager back in class after the two-month French summer holidays.

Yet a year ago here, at the Lycée Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers, north of Paris, the mood was very different.

France’s centre-Right Government had passed a law banning religious symbols from schools and girls such as Fathima were at the centre of a fierce national controversy.

The law applies to all visible symbols, including kippas, turbans and large Christian crosses. But no one ever had any doubt about its main target — the Muslim headscarf that was the focus of a long and bitter struggle between Islamic extremists and the secular state.

At the Lycée Henri Wallon, where Alma and Lila Levy were expelled for refusing to remove their scarves, the debate was heated. Most teachers backed the law on the ground, hoping that it would end a drift towards multiculturalism that was separating pupils along ethnic and religious lines.

But leaders of France’s five million Muslims denounced it as an attack on religious freedom and parents expressed fears that children would be driven out of school because of “a bit of cloth on their heads”.

Twelve months on, the row has subsided and the law is being hailed by the Government as a success that has stemmed the Islamic fundamentalist tide and brought calm to the nation’s lycées.

Fathima, who is 16, agrees. “In the end I really don’t think it was a bad law at all. I wear my voile until I get to the school gates and then I take it off. School is not a place for religion. It is a place where we are all French and we are all equal. After lessons, I put the scarf back on again. There’s no difficulty.”

Standing across the road in a light-green tunic and cream-coloured headscarf was Sarra, a tall, self-assured 16-year-old. Last year she took part in demonstrations against la loi sur le voile and had considered defying the authorities by refusing to remove hers.

Today her anger is subdued. “We had our rebellion and it didn’t work, so I’ll take my scarf off before I go into the lycée. It was difficult at first but I’ve learnt to accept it.”

In the year since the law was implemented 626 girls have arrived for lessons wearing a Muslim headscarf — compared with 1,465 over the previous 12 months and more than 5,000 at the start of the decade.

Of these, 496 agreed to remove them when summoned for a talk with the headteacher. A further 45 refused and were expelled — as were two Sikhs who said that they could not attend school without a turban. The other pupils left the state eduction system — some for correspondance courses, some for religious schools in France and some for schools abroad, including ten or so in Britain.

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