Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced plans on Sunday to introduce a legal limit on the number of foreign students allowed in Italian classrooms, as well as a ban on face-covering garments, including the Islamic burqa and niqab, in schools.
Meloni made the announcement during a speech at Fenix, an event organized by Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of her conservative Brothers of Italy party.
“If in a classroom there is only one child who doesn’t understand Italian, it is possible that that child will manage, with the help of his peers and teachers, to learn the language and integrate fast. But if these children are many, or even the majority, that’s not integration anymore, that’s abandonment,” Meloni said.
She said Italy’s government would introduce legislation to legally limit the number of foreign students in individual classrooms to about 30%, adding: “There’s no way that in an Italian classroom, the ones who feel marginalized are Italian children because they have become a minority.”
According to the ISMU ETS Foundation, an immigration-focused think tank, citing data from the Italian Ministry of Education, students with non-Italian citizenship currently account for about 11.6% of the total school enrollment across the country.
Under Italy’s citizenship system, children born in the country to non-Italian parents do not generally acquire Italian citizenship automatically at birth, but only after turning 18 years old, if they have remained in the country.
Meloni also announced plans to prohibit face-covering garments, specifically mentioning the burqas and niqabs worn by some women and girls, in schools.
“At school, you go with your face uncovered, and in Italy no one, in the name of a real or presumed tradition, can decide that a young woman has to hide. Equality between men and women is non-negotiable,” Meloni said.
The proposed measure would target only garments that cover the face, not all forms of Islamic head covering.
Meloni said the government would bring the proposed legislation to the Council of Ministers, after which it would require parliamentary approval to become law.
“There are some neighborhoods in more depopulated areas in Italy where the concentration of people coming from a non-Italian background is higher and inevitably creates higher numbers of non-Italian students in classrooms,” Mariagrazia Santagati, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, in Milan, told CBS News.
Italy would not be the first European country to restrict face coverings in public places. France, Belgium and several other European nations have adopted restrictions on face-covering garments, although the scope and legal basis of those measures vary.
The proposed limit on foreign students in classrooms, however, would represent a first in Europe if it is adopted.
“Italian school is based on inclusion, from children with disabilities to other minorities, everyone attends the same classes. And public school is open to every child to attend, regardless of their juridical status and religion,” said Santagati. “It’s hard to understand how this would be put into practice. We are for multiculturalism.”
The premier’s announcements came as Italy looks ahead to next year’s general election, with Meloni facing competition from both the left and right of the political spectrum.