Italy's government under pressure: Meloni's controversial school reform

The politicians from Italy's right-wing government coalition are nervous. This is because parliamentary elections will take place in 2027 - and because the right-wing party "Futuro Nazionale" under former general Roberto Vannacci has gained massive amounts of votes in surveys.

Foreign Minister Tajani and the skirts

And so the government politicians flee forward with sometimes bizarre statements. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani tried to promote his party "Forza Italia" at a party event by comparing it to a woman:

Tajani's comparison backfired. The whole of Italy was outraged, the opposition accused him of using an image of women from the century before last, and caricatures of Tajani in a miniskirt piled up online.

Meloni's foray into the classroom

Just one day later, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni went on the offensive. With their proposal to ban burkas, i.e. fully veiled faces, in schools and to cap the proportion of children born abroad without knowledge of Italian to 30 percent per class. At a party event, she said it couldn't be the case that the children who felt excluded in a class were the Italian children because they were in the minority.

Italian media immediately classified this move. The 30 percent limit has been prescribed by ministerial decree since 2010, but has never been consistently implemented. And the problem exaggerated by Meloni is not a problem at all. Of around 300,000 school classes throughout Italy, there are only around 1,000 in which the proportion of immigrant children - i.e. those who were born abroad and then immigrated - is over 20 percent.

A few schools with a high proportion of foreigners that the new law is likely to actually affect are in northern Italy. But here too there will be difficulties in implementation, according to the Italian media: children could be distributed to surrounding schools. But because of the constitutional right to education, these should not be more than 20 kilometers from home - and that is not realistic in some areas.

Opposition speaks of ideology

The former Italian journalist and left-wing politician Michele Santoro also emphasized on the television channel La7 that Meloni's decree was an election campaign tactic. If she really cared about the matter, she would have presented the decree much earlier and given the schools time to prepare. The duplication of content with the burkas also makes it clear that it is “pure ideology”.

Other opposition politicians have also described Meloni's new decree as propaganda or symbolic politics - a flight forward due to a new threat from the far right. At the same time, the decree has been weakened. The ban on the simple Muslim headscarf - the hijab - originally called for by Meloni is no longer mentioned in the finished text.

Implementation remains questionable

In the meantime, even President Sergio Mattarella has intervened in the debate: "The school educates everyone and is open to everyone. It must not build walls, it must unite and not divide."

The decree has now come into force. The Italian Parliament now has 60 days to convert it into proper law. Everyday life at schools remains unchanged for the time being: school authorities and principals still have to work out how the quotas and language controls should be organized in practice.