Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says the government will propose measures to ban face coverings such as burqas and niqabs in schools and to cap the number of foreign students in each class.
Meloni says a draft proposal will be presented to a Cabinet meeting to legally set a maximum number of foreign students per classroom. She also links the education policy to integration, saying parents of foreign students facing serious difficulties should be required to ensure learning of Italian. She argues that if too many children in a class do not understand Italian, it becomes neglect rather than integration.
The reporting frames these steps in different ways. Some outlets emphasize the specific restrictions on religious face coverings, describing them as requiring students to attend school with faces uncovered. Others focus more on the migration and integration context in Italy—where the country’s role as a destination for people arriving via the Mediterranean is a recurring political issue. Coverage notes that Meloni did not provide a specific figure for the maximum number of foreign students per class and that foreign students make up about 11.6% of enrollment, according to cited research data.
