Parents of foreign schoolchildren in Italy may be required to learn Italian

🇮🇹 Parents of foreign schoolchildren in Italy may be required to learn Italian. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has stated that the government is preparing new measures to integrate foreign pupils into the education system. One of the key proposals is to require parents of foreign children who are experiencing serious difficulties with integration to learn Italian. According to Meloni, if there are too many children in a class who do not speak Italian, the integration process ceases to function properly. The government also plans to set a cap on the number of foreign pupils in a single class. Exactly what this limit will be has not yet been announced. Separately, Meloni announced her intention to introduce a ban on wearing the burqa and the niqab in schools – that is, clothing that completely covers the face. She emphasised that pupils in Italian schools must have their faces uncovered. According to the ISMU research centre, pupils without Italian citizenship account for 11.6 per cent of all schoolchildren in Italy. At the same time, foreign citizenship does not automatically mean a lack of knowledge of the Italian language — a significant proportion of these children were born in Italy or have been studying here for a long time. Important: these are, for the time being, measures announced by the government, not legislation in force. The final rules and conditions for their application are to be set out in a future regulatory act.