Italy bans burqas in schools, caps numbers of foreign students per class

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's cabinet has adopted a decree law banning burqas and niqabs in schools and capping the number of students with a poor command of Italian per class.

It introduces "A 30 per cent cap on the number of students in a class who do not have an adequate command of Italian, more tools for learning our language, and a ban on the burqa and niqab in schools," Meloni wrote on social media on Thursday local time.

If a child seriously struggles to integrate at school, social services will be called, and the parents will be obliged to attend free Italian lessons.

Failure to comply will be punished with a fine of up to €1,000 ($1,620).

Italy is a frontline country for migration, and integration is a hot campaign issue ahead of next year's general election.

Meloni is grappling with the rise of National Future, a party founded in February by former army general Roberto Vannacci and already polling at around 8 per cent, while surveys show her coalition trailing the centre-left bloc.

National Future has made schools a central battleground in its campaign advocating "remigration" — the deportation of foreigners to their countries of origin — and has argued that Islamic "contamination" in classrooms harms national identity.

The Save the Children charity has warned that forcing children to change schools or enrol in a different institution from their peers simply because of their nationality or limited proficiency in Italian would "create 'first-class' and 'second-class' students".

But education minister Giuseppe Valditara said "inadequate language proficiency ... hinders educational progress".

"Parental participation in their child's educational path is fundamental for academic success," he told journalists.

Valditara said there were 34,000 school classes in Italy in which over 30 per cent of the students are foreign.

But most of those would not be affected by the new law, which targets new arrivals rather than those born in Italy or who attended kindergarten.

The 30 per cent limit on the number of foreign students per class was established in a ministerial memorandum in 2010.

But the limit was flexible, and could be raised in cases involving foreign students with adequate language skills, such as foreign students born in Italy, or lowered when foreign students have a poor command of Italian.

Meloni first unveiled the plans on Sunday at a rally of the youth wing of her Brothers of Italy party, where she also said parents of children who do not speak Italian would be required to attend language courses.

In what appeared to be a part of a broader push to rally support for the coalition ahead of a 2027 election, Meloni last week also announced a partial rollback of the unpopular road tax.

The burqa ban was "a matter of security", Meloni said in a television interview after the cabinet meeting.

The school measures have sparked concern among principals, who say they will be difficult to enforce in areas with large immigrant populations, particularly in northern Italy.

If demand exceeds the 30 per cent cap, education authorities will have to redistribute pupils among nearby schools, taking into account family needs and access to education, the draft said, without specifying how that would be done in practice.

President Sergio Mattarella, who has to sign off on the decree, flagged this week that he is wary of any barriers being placed on education.

According to think tank ISMU Foundation, around 900,000 foreign students attend Italian schools, accounting for 11.6 per cent of the total student population. About 43 per cent come from other European countries, while 32 per cent have African backgrounds.

Opposition leader Elly Schlein accused the government of "a new witch hunt at the expense of children".

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