Why French students want English uniforms

Béziers, France

The École Mairan in Béziers in southern France is a happy neighbourhood elementary school housed in a superb renovated 19th-century hôtel particulier. In the middle of the medieval city, surrounded by both great houses and humbler tenements, it is attended by 120 pupils aged six to 11. There are the children of Algerian and Moroccan immigrants and the children of distinguished Biterrois families, with a sprinkling of Spaniards, Italians, Ukrainians and one American.

Mairan is one of four schools in Béziers, and 100 in France, where this autumn children have started wearing school uniforms. So I went to Béziers to have a look.

‘The children love their uniforms. Some practically sleep in them’

The pilot scheme, mandated by one-time Macron protégé Gabriel Attal when he was education minister (he was subsequently briefly prime minister), has the loftiest of objectives. The intention is to discover how uniforms might reduce bullying and inequality, reinforce discipline, promote a focus on education and also to see how this might reinforce secularism more broadly against challenges such as the growing influence of Islam in schools. Attal’s initiative was strongly supported by Brigitte Macron, herself a former teacher, and will continue for two years.

In the name of secularism, Islamic and other religious symbols including the abaya and the kippah are banned from state schools in France, but girls are increasingly pressured to adopt Islamic dress out of school. A uniform is the riposte, an alternative identity.

It’s too early to know how the national experiment is going but in Béziers, tenue scolaire obligatoire has already cultivated a ‘sense of belonging and purpose’ at the École Mairan, says headteacher Pierre Jean as he shows me around. The children rise to their feet when a visitor enters the classroom.