The mother of a pupil at a French school stabbed a teacher to death in front of her class.

The education minister said the mother had "serious psychiatric problems". She was taken into custody.

Deadly attacks in a school are extremely rare in France, and the stabbing in front of a class of five and six-year-olds raised concern at the highest levels.

French president Francois Hollande expressed outrage at "this abominable drama" at the Edouard Herriot school in Albi in southern France.

Education minister Benoit Hamon travelled immediately to the school, and told reporters that the mother of a pupil "committed this abominable act in a class against a remarkable teacher". A police official said the mother stabbed the teacher with a knife soon after school started.

Hamon said the attacker's child had been in the school only for a month and a half, and the mother had had very little contact with the school staff. It was unclear whether the daughter was in class at the time of the attack.

"The children were immediately taken in by another teacher who brought them to another classroom to talk to them, to tell them stories, to try to break them away from what they had just lived through," Hamon said.

The teacher, 34, had two small daughters, Hamon added.

Fellow teacher Robert Couffignal of the regional teachers union told BFM television that the school had experienced tensions in the past but had never seen such violence.

"We are not going to put metal detectors in front of the schools to keep the parents from entering. We are in a relation of trust with the parents," Couffignal said. "This is the relation we want to keep."

Other teachers urged better protection for teachers and attention to the tensions they face with parents.

The education minister lamented the especially painful timing of the attack.

"This July 4, the moment when we should be happy for all children that school is over, that vacations are beginning, that teachers successfully completed the school year, has been turned into a day of mourning ... by this abominable crime," Hamon said.

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