The Council of Ministers yesterday approved the decree law which introduces a 30% ceiling for foreign pupils in the first grades and bans the burqa and niqab at school, with fines of 200 to 1,000 euros for parents who refuse to participate in Italian language courses. The cap will start from the 2027/28 school year and will not include all students with foreign citizenship. Those born in Italy and those who have already attended Italian school for a few years will be excluded. It is a decisive distinction, because the majority of foreign students were born in Italy. To understand where the rule could have more weight, we analyzed the ministry’s data school by school. In state schools, pupils with non-Italian citizenship are 742 thousand out of 6.17 million, 12%. In 310 municipalities they already exceed 30%. The record is from Baranzate, in the Milan area, with 76%. Among the largest centres, the first is Monfalcone, with 48.1%.
What does the decree law provide on the cap on foreigners in the classroom?
The measure was announced last Sunday by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni from the stage of Fenix, the Fratelli d’Italia youth event. On Wednesday, the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara confirmed the instrument: “It will be a law decree, because it is urgent to intervene from this year”, he declared during a press conference of the League, as reported by Adnkronos.
A law decree comes into force immediately and must be converted by Parliament within 60 days. The text approved on Thursday 24 September now goes to the President of the Republic for signature and then publication in the Official Journal. Compared to the previews of the day before, it contains some important differences. The provision is divided into four points.
- 30% ceiling in first classes from 2027/28. The limit concerns only the first classes of primary, middle and high school, starting from the 2027/28 school year, without affecting the classes already formed. Valditara had spoken of a “purely linguistic” criterion, but the text does not provide an Italian test: it uses the place of birth and the years of schooling in Italy. Primary school includes students with non-Italian citizenship born abroad who have not attended at least two years of nursery school. Those who have not successfully completed at least three years in the Italian school system count in middle and high school. The minister confirmed that children born in Italy do not fall under the ceiling. There is no distinction between EU and non-EU citizens.
- Redistribution between neighboring schools. If the limit is not respected, the local school offices, in agreement with the principals, distribute the pupils among nearby schools according to the “principle of proximity and family needs”, taking into account the pupil’s domicile. Schools that still cannot stay below the threshold receive funds to improve Italian: 3.4 million euros in 2027 and 14.1 million per year from 2028.
- Ban on face covering at school. Burqas, niqabs and other clothing that prevent facial recognition are prohibited during lessons, extracurricular activities and school-family meetings, except for health or safety reasons. The fine ranges from 200 to 1,000 euros. If a minor violates the ban, the fine also applies to those who exercise parental responsibility. The infringement is ascertained by the school director, while the fine is decided by the prefect.
- Italian courses for parents. When the family’s language barrier hinders the children’s school integration, the school reports the case to social services. Social services can provide free Italian courses for parents in the provincial Centers for Adult Education (CPIA), with the aim of reaching A2 level. Anyone who does not participate risks a fine of up to 1,000 euros. Parents who cannot learn due to age, illness or disability are exempt. The draft also provided for the removal of the minor from the family home, a rule that was later eliminated.
The idea of a threshold is not new. In 2010, ministerial circular no. 2, signed by the then minister Mariastella Gelmini, had already set a ceiling of 30% of pupils with non-Italian citizenship per class. However, it allowed upward exceptions when foreign students already knew Italian, for example because they were born in Italy.
Even earlier, between 1989 and 1990, the circulars signed by Sergio Mattarella as Minister of Education recommended avoiding concentrations of foreign students in the same class. Meloni referred to those circulars. At the time, however, there were just over 15 thousand foreign students in Italy.
How many are there in Italian schools and the municipalities involved: MIM data
We used open data from the Ministry’s Single School Data Portal, which reports pupils by citizenship in the year 2024/25, school by school. The perimeter is primary, state middle and high schools, without childhood and equal. Here students with non-Italian citizenship are 742,388 out of 6,172,068, 12%, and almost one in five is a citizen of another EU country.
The share decreases as the grade increases: 15.1% in first grade, 7.1% in fifth grade. In high school, foreigners are 5.3% in high schools and 15.6% in professional schools. The North-South gap is clear: in Emilia-Romagna (19.1%) and Lombardy (18.9%) the share is six times that of Sardinia (3.2%).
Foreign students already exceed the 30% threshold in 310 municipalities, 23 of which have more than a thousand students. Among the municipalities with at least 300 members, the record is Baranzate, in the Milan area, with 76%, followed by Soresina (Cremona, 66.5%) and Serravalle Scrivia (Alessandria, 54.1%). The most relevant case in terms of size is Monfalcone, the city of the Fincantieri shipyards and the Bangladeshi community. Of over 3,300 students, 48.1% are foreigners, and 69.2% in primary schools. Among the large cities, Prato (30.8%), Milan (24.7%) and Turin (23.8%) lead. Rome stops at 13.4%, Naples and Palermo around 4%.
How many schools and how many classes exceed the 30% threshold
At the individual school level, 2,577 state schools out of 28,032 (9.2%) exceed 30% and 493 exceed 50%. In Milan there are 132 out of 309 schools, in Turin 102 out of 236. The open data do not show the sections, but indicate the students enrolled for each year of each school, for example all the third grades of a middle school. Counting like this, 10.6% of these groups are above the threshold: it reaches 13.3% in primary school and drops to 6% in high school. It is in line with the ministry’s estimate, which for 2022/23 had 7.6% of classes, over 31 thousand out of 414 thousand, above 30%.
Who will really concern the roof: citizenship and language are not the same thing
All these numbers measure citizenship, while the decree will only count a part of foreign students: those born abroad and with a few years of school in Italy. Furthermore, the ceiling only concerns first classes. There, students with non-Italian citizenship are 15.1% in first grade, 14.7% in sixth grade and 10.8% in first grade. According to the ministry, in 2022/23 65.4% of pupils with non-Italian citizenship were born in Italy. There are around 600 thousand children who have mostly completed their entire schooling in our country and who, as the minister confirmed, will not be included in the count. The same ministry has calculated that, counting only students born abroad, classes above 30% drop from 7.6% to 0.6%, i.e. a few thousand in the whole of Italy.
However, the linguistic gap exists. In the 2026 Invalsi Report, students born abroad obtained 22.9 points less in Italian than the national average. Even those born in Italy to foreign families remain below the average, by 13.6 points. The decree declares that it intends to intervene precisely on this delay. However, it does not directly measure knowledge of Italian: it uses place of birth and years of schooling in Italy as indicators.
What are the consequences of the Valditara decree: redistribution, exceptions and legal issues
The first practical consequence concerns where the new students enrolled in the first classes who exceed the threshold will go. The envisaged mechanism is the movement towards nearby schools, but the data shows that in many areas there are no nearby schools below 30%.
In 16 municipalities all years of all schools are already above the threshold for citizenship, including Baranzate, Soresina, Martinengo, Santa Croce Camerina and Luco dei Marsi. In Baranzate there are two state schools: the Rodari primary school (79%) and the Galilei middle school (71%). There, as in Monfalcone, redistribution would mean sending the children to another municipality. It is therefore plausible that precisely in the situations with the highest foreign presence the rule translates above all into exemptions and additional hours of Italian, financed with the funds provided for by the decree.
The second concerns timing. Valditara had announced an intervention “from this year”, but the cap will only come into effect with enrollments in the first classes of 2027/28. From that moment on, some families may have to enroll their children in a school other than the one closest to home, with the burden of distances and transportation. The text asks to take into account the pupil’s domicile, but does not say up to what distance a move is acceptable.
Then there are the legal issues. Article 34 of the Constitution establishes that “school is open to all”. According to parliamentary circles cited by Ansa, this will be the reference with which the President of the Republic will examine the text before signing. From the Quirinale, according to Adnkronos, attention filters to merit rather than to the instrument, with calls for integration and the right to education. There is also the question of urgency, a necessary requirement for a decree law, on a roof that will only come into operation from the 2027/28 school year.
As for the full veil, a 2008 ruling by the Council of State, recalled by Ansa, established that wearing it for religious reasons is a “justified reason” with respect to the ban on masking, except for the refusal to be identified. The decree tries to overcome the problem with a specific ban for schools, linked to face recognition. It remains to be seen whether it will stand up to any appeals. There is no official data on how many female students wear burqas or niqabs in Italian schools.
On a political level, the measure divided the majority and the opposition. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini defined it as a “sensible” rule, while Senate President Ignazio La Russa said he did not understand the controversy. For the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala it is “fluff”. For the vice-president of the Chamber Anna Ascani (Pd) the government “is making propaganda on schools, on the skin of children and young people”. Valditara rejected accusations of racism: the goal, he said, is to avoid “50s Alabama”-style “ghetto classes” and “concentrations that slow down the learning of all children.”
