France's education minister Pap Ndiaye said that there were "about 500 cases" of breaches of secularism in French schools this March – figures that were up on previous months – due to the observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Ndiaye was speaking on France 3 television on Sunday about the so-called "barometer" that France uses to record the wearing of religious symbols, dress code, verbal provocation, the rejection of republican values in over 59,000 schools, colleges and senior high schools.
