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

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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
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   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
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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