Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her government is preparing two legislative proposals that would ban face coverings in Italian schools and limit the number of foreign students in classrooms to safeguard national cohesion.
“Italian children cannot feel like a minority in the classroom,” she said Sunday in a speech at Fenix, an annual event organized by the youth division of her right-wing Brothers of Italy party.
“If the number of children who do not understand the language of instruction becomes large, or even forms the majority, that is no longer integration; that is neglect,” Meloni added.
Roughly 930,000 students without Italian citizenship are enrolled in the country’s schools, representing almost 11.6% of the school population, according to research institute Fondazione ISMU.
Over the last decade, the number of foreign minors in the country has fallen by 4.5%, ISMU found.
Meloni did not give details on what numerical cap her cabinet might propose, but made clear the measures are meant to keep Italian language and culture central in classrooms.
The Italian leader built her support on voters worried about immigration, and has consistently made migration a core issue of her agenda.
Her government has previously proposed banning full-face coverings in public spaces as part of efforts to fight what it framed as social fragmentation; that proposal is still under consideration in the lower house.
