The ban only applies to compulsory education, and so does not include higher vocational education facilities and universities.
Minister Plasterk says that adults can decide for themselves whether they want to be confronted with a teacher wearing a burqa.
A Muslim member of the French government has backed a court’s decision to deny citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears the burqa.
Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara said she hoped last month’s ruling would “dissuade certain fanatics from imposing the burqa on their wives”.
She told the newspaper, Le Parisien, the head-to-toe garment was a “prison”.
France has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes.
The case yesterday reopened the debate about Islam in France, and how the secular republic reconciles itself with the freedom of religion guaranteed by the French constitution.