As the ban on Religious signs or symbols in schools takes affect in France how is it like for the ordinary school children at the centre of the controversy.

It was easier for 16-year-old Nadia Arabi, a practising Muslim, to remove her head scarf than to defy a new French law banning religious signs in the classroom that took effect when schools opened - or countenance the contempt she risked for breaking a national chain of solidarity.

She was not alone. Compliance with the law - among the most divisive issues in France - was widespread, Education Minister Francois Fillon said.

"It is clear that the international context has played a non-negligible role" in the peaceful return to school, Armand Martin, head of Raymond Queneau High School in Villeneuve d'Ascq told LCI television.

The school, outside Lille, in the north, holds the unofficial record for girls wearing Muslim head scarves - 58 last year, according to Le Monde newspaper.

Fillon said only 240 girls in all of France showed up at the school gate wearing head scarves - compared with 1,200 last year.

Of those, only 70 refused to remove their scarves when they walked through the school door.

Those who defied the new measure are in discussions with school officials, he said.

The law calls for a period of dialogue, guaranteeing offenders cannot be expelled immediately.

Each school decides whether those girls attend class or go to study halls during the discussion period.

"I was always treated badly and I felt uncomfortable, so I decided to take it off," said Arabi, before heading through the gates of the Henri Wallon school in the working-class Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.

"Just because I wear a headscarf doesn't mean I think it's right to kidnap French people or anyone else."

Students at Henri Wallon, where two veiled sisters were expelled last October, said they were given a handout spelling out the law and instructed to be able to explain it.

The law, passed in March, forbids conspicuous religious signs or apparel in public schools, including Jewish skull caps and large Christian crosses.

However, it is aimed at Islamic headscarves and meant to counter a rise in Muslim fundamentalism reportedly taking root in schools.

There are an estimated 5 million Muslims in France, making it the largest Muslim population in western Europe.

It has also been banned in Germany, Tunisia and Turkey but it is the ban in France that has caused the most controversy.

PICTURED: Maryam Duale and Ala El-Mahrek, both from Manchester, joined women from all faiths at a protest outside the French embassy in London during Hijab Solidarity Day. Rajnaara Akhtar of the Assembly for the Protection of the Hijab said, "I am constantly being told that I am being oppressed and made to wear it but that is not true. I choose to."