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Marseille's 'ghetto lycée' won't give up despite the problems its pupils face

   Surrounded by poverty and violence, the teachers at Lycée Saint-Exupéry work to make it an oasis of learning
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   Marseille France apartments
   A question of class ⦠apartment blocks in Marseille. Photograph: Gerard Julien/Getty

   In 1957, when it was first built, the population was soaring so there was no time to lose thinking of new names: it was just known as the Lycée Nord. On the hills to the north of Marseille, tower blocks were popping up like mushrooms, as housing for industrial workers and their immigrant reinforcements. Subsequently renamed after the writer Saint-Exupéry, it is still the only school in the poorest quarter of the city preparing students aged 15 and older for the baccalauréat and a range of technical qualifications.

   The main building, which is 350 metres long, overlooks Port de l'Estaque. In 2008 a new wing â all glass and concrete â was added. The lycée backs on to grassland, dotted with maritime pines, where the students can stroll. Le Monde visited on a Thursday, almost at the end of the school year, coinciding with a party for the top year. Several young women were inflating balloons. "It's nice here," they exclaim, with the characteristic Marseille twang. The college seems like an oasis of tranquillity, surrounded by "problem" estates. Just up the road the tower blocks of Consolat-Mirabeau are the source of regular incursions into the car park, despite the fence. To the south Campagne-Lévêque is just recovering after a month's occupation by the police to stop various forms of trafficking.

   Despite the summer weather, the cicadas and the smell of rock roses, what is striking is the imprint of poverty and violence. For the past 20 years the area has been gripped by unemployment and its attendant woes: increasingly casual employment, single-parent families, pensioners living behind bolted doors, single women struggling to make ends meet. The past two years have made things even worse: "There are things we didn't see before, like the dustbins being picked over every day, organised prostitution and youth suicides," says Patricia Bonin, a member of the parent-teacher association.
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   Marseille's 'ghetto lycée' won't give up despite the problems its pupils face
   This article was published on the Guardian website at 14.01 BST on Tuesday 23 July 2013.