Minister Valditara, in connection with the press conference presenting the League's package of rules against Islamic inter-Islamism, anticipated some details on the government's provision. In addition to the cap on the number of foreign students per class, there is also a rule on the ban on burqas and niqabs. "Burqa and niqab have no place in Italian schools - said Valditara -. It is a battle of civilization: if we want to fight patriarchy and the isolation of women we cannot consider instruments that consider them inferior". The minister also announced that the measure "will be a law decree because we need to intervene immediately". He added: "From this year it will concern new arrivals. But let's be clear, let's not divide the classes."
Valditara explained that "the law will introduce a 30% ceiling for students who do not know Italian adequately: therefore, it will not simply be citizenship that counts, but knowledge of the language. For example, children who have attended nursery school or a sufficient number of years in Italian school will be excluded from the limit". The minister added: “The new measure will be a binding law that provides an adequate mechanism to make it operational.” In particular, he explained that "the local school offices will coordinate the principals to distribute students in a more balanced manner among the nearby schools; where this is not physically possible, exemptions and an strengthening of the teaching of Italian will be provided". And again: "We structure the intervention with the law. We give powers to the provincial school offices for distribution in neighborhood schools and we also give the possibility, with a loan of over 14 million, where it is not possible to distribute these children, of a personalized strengthening of the Italian language children".
The minister, on the roof, reiterated: "The criterion is purely linguistic. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, knowing they are lying." He then underlined the "centrality of language as a tool of integration". And again: "We want to avoid 1950s Alabama conditions with ghetto classes." Already in the last few hours, from New York, Valditara had explained that the cap for foreigners in classes also applies to students from the European Union who do not speak Italian. "If a Polish boy does not know Italian he cannot integrate. So the problem is not ethnic origin, national origin, racial origin. The problem is the knowledge of our language", said the minister. “The ghetto school”, he added, is when a student is marginalized compared to the rest of the community and therefore we do not want the Alabama schools of the 1950s, where on one side there were whites and on the other side there were blacks”.
Valditara then ruled out tensions with Colle: “Absolutely not, there is no clash with the Quirinale. Our initiative, as the President of the Republic also said very well in Amatrice, goes in the direction of integration. We want foreign children who do not speak our language adequately to avoid being ghettoised." The minister then announced the allocation of 14 million for the improvement of Italian for foreign students. He later added: "There has been a lot of exploitation on this matter, improper words have been used which in a civilized country I would not have liked to hear such as racism and suprematism. The words of Mattarella and Zuppi were exploited. We also want integration and I have heard 'no to ghetto classes'. Mattarella said something that we also say with this provision."
