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It will focus only on students who do not know Italian at all, for example they are unable to understand what the teacher explains in class nor to ask questions to the professor, therefore mainly on newly arrived non-EU citizens students, the decree expected for Thursday in the Council of Ministers which will establish a ceiling of 30% of foreigners in the classroom.
The provision will not apply to those who attended nursery schools or those who attended Italian schools with good results. And it will provide exemptions in all those areas where the concentration of immigrants is very high or it is difficult to find other schools nearby. And where it is not possible to place the student in a nearby school, the government has decided to allocate 14 million euros to strengthen the teaching of Italian, as the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara explained to Tg1. These funds will be used “precisely to strengthen the teaching and personalization of Italian teaching to those children who will still find themselves in more complex contexts”, said Valditara.
The provision also prohibits wearing the burqua and niquab at school (according to some estimates there are no more than 500-600 female students who wear them), compulsory Italian courses for migrant parents of students who struggle with the language, and will also concern students with European passports who have difficulty with Italian. Furthermore, it is likely that the document also includes other changes for schools such as the change of name from technical institutes to high schools.
There are just under a thousand classes with more than 20% of newly arrived foreign students who do not know Italian, mostly in primary school. Valditara, who today in an interview with Corriere della Sera said he was worried about the phenomenon of white flight, which leads many parents to move their children from schools with a high percentage of immigration, in the evening replied to those among the opposition who defined him as “racist”: “situations of this type are a prelude to a return to ghettoisation and segregation in the Alabama style of the 1950s. I don’t believe that politicians of such bad faith or ignorance are worthy of representing Italians”. Strong criticism from the opposition.
«Valditara doesn’t know what he’s talking about and he’s not serious. It has a single clear objective: to wave as much racist smoke as possible against migrants during the election campaign to cover up all their inadequacy”, attacks Elisabetta Piccolotti, Avs. For M5S senator Barbara Floridia “by chasing Vannacci they want to take us back to school with the black shirts”.
“Children are not tacky,” says Irene Manzi, PD group leader in the education commission and national school manager of the PD. For the most part, FI exponents appear cautious. For Forza Italia MEP Flavio Tosi «we know that there are neighborhoods with a high concentration of foreigners, the same goes for those municipalities around the capitals with strong industrial expansion. There it’s not like you can move children to schools perhaps several kilometers away.” Therefore, for the blue exponent, “the incoming decree affirms a fair principle, but flexibility mechanisms must be foreseen”. And also for the University Minister Anna Maria Bernini “the 30% is there but it must be reduced to the individual realities which are not all the same”.