Italian government approves burqa ban in schools and cap on foreign students

The useful part

It also introduces compulsory Italian classes for foreign parents whose children fall seriously behind at school, with fines of €200 to €1,000 for both the veil ban and non-attendance at the language courses. The 30 per cent threshold applies to the first-year classes of primary, middle and secondary schools. and is based on Italian-language proficiency rather than nationality, so EU and non-EU citizens are treated alike.

How it works

• Local education authorities will be responsible for redistributing pupils who exceed the threshold to nearby schools, taking into account family circumstances, disabilities and how easily a pupil can reach...
• Pupils who have already completed two years of Italian nursery school, or three years elsewhere in the Italian system, are exempt.
• flexibilities that observers say leave considerable room for interpretation.

Details worth keeping

Education minister Giuseppe Valditara said the rule would affect around 1,000 classrooms nationally, or roughly 0.3 per cent of the total, and stressed that already-formed classes for the current school year would not be broken up.