French Education Minister on Sunday said that it will ban children from wearing the abaya, the loose-fitting, full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in state-run schools.

“I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools,” Education Minister Gabriel Attal said in an interview with TV channel TF1.

“When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them,” he said.

France, which has enforced a strict ban on religious signs in state schools since 19th-century laws removed any traditional Catholic influence from public education, has struggled to update guidelines to deal with a growing Muslim community.

In 2004, it banned headscarves in schools and passed a ban on full-face veils in public in 2010.