Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, a former education minister, will also receive the school principal later Wednesday in a show of support.
French politicians on Wednesday denounced what they called an "Islamist" attack on education after a school principal resigned following death threats over a Muslim veil.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, a former education minister, will also receive the school principal later Wednesday in a show of support.
The headmaster at a high school and college in eastern Paris quit after receiving death threats online following an altercation with a student, officials told AFP on Tuesday.
In late February, he asked three students to remove their headscarves on school premises, but one of them refused and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors. He later received death threats online.
According to a school letter sent to teachers, pupils and parents on Tuesday, the principal stood down for "security reasons", while education officials said he had taken "early retirement".
"It's a disgrace," Bruno Retailleau, the head of the right-wing Republicans faction in the Senate upper house, said on X (former Twitter) on Wednesday.
"We can't accept it," Boris Vallaud, the head of the Socialist deputies in the National Assembly lower house, told television broadcaster France 2, calling the incident "a collective failure".
In a message addressed to the school’s staff, quoted by French communist daily L’Humanite, the principal said that he had taken the decision to leave “for his own safety and that of the school".
The student lodged a complaint against the principal, accusing him of mistreating her during the incident. She told French daily Le Parisien that she had been “hit hard on the arm" by the principal.
According to Barron's, the student is an adult who was at the school for vocational training.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office told AFP on Wednesday that her complaint had been dismissed.
A probe has also been launched into cyber-harassment following the death threats against the headmaster. A 26-year-old man has been arrested for making death threats against the principal on the internet. He is due to stand trial in April.
In a further show of support, the education ministry said in a statement that it would “never" abandon teachers in the face of “threats".
The ministry said that “all teams" remained mobilised, adding that the principal’s decision to leave his post was “understandable given the seriousness of the attacks against him."
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet visited the school in early March and deplored the “unacceptable attacks".
France in 2004 banned schoolchildren from wearing “signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" such as headscarves, turbans or kippah on the basis of the country’s secular laws which are meant to guarantee neutrality in state institutions.
The resignation from the headmaster comes as the country goes through deep tensions, following a series of incidents including the killing of a teacher by an Islamist former pupil last year.