Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has introduced the Decreto Scuola 2026. The law entered into effect on October 1, 2026, and the Italian Parliament must convert it into a permanent statute within 60 days. The law includes several measures affecting the education system and minorities across Italy. It restricts face coverings in school, creates a system under which foreign parents of school-attending children can be required to attend Italian language courses, and introduces a 30% limit on certain pupils with non-Italian citizenship in classrooms.
The decree is currently in force, but Parliament has not yet made it permanent law. The 30% rule is the most consequential of the three measures and must be thoroughly examined—at the very least — regarding its compatibility with EU law and how it may affect EU citizens.
Italy, like most of Europe, is an aging society. In January 2026, 25.1% of the country’s population was aged 65 or over, the highest proportion in the European Union. At the same time, only 11.6% of the population is under 15, the lowest recorded average in the EU, according to the European Commission. The working-age population accounts for 63.2% of the Italian population, but that number keeps shrinking every year. This creates a contradiction in Italian politics: it needs more people to maintain its workforce, yet it has one of the most politically sensitive societies toward migration.
In the school system, the number of foreign pupils shows how migration plays a crucial role in Italy’s demography. In the 2022/23 school year, 914,860 pupils in Italy had non-Italian citizenship, representing 11.2% of the total school population. The figure has continued to rise, reaching an estimated 11.6% in 2024/25. At the same time, the distribution is highly unequal. In some regions and schools, the concentration of pupils with non-Italian citizenship is considerably higher than the national average. Migration brings challenges; rapid population change can place immense pressure on schools, housing, and other public institutions, and Italian PM Meloni and the far-right are skeptical and hostile toward migrants.
The government supposedly presented this law as a measure to improve integration rather than increase discrimination; however, the question is more complex. It is important to understand whether these policies address educational problems associated with immigration or risk turning integration into a question of separation.
The Government’s Standpoint
A limit on the percentage of pupils is not entirely new in the Italian education system; however, it will be written into hard law. The current education Minister Giuseppe Valditara has framed the decree as a weapon that is “fighting against ghetto schools” or “scuole ghetto”. This refers to schools where classes have many pupils who lack Italian-speaking proficiency and slow down lessons. He justified the law by citing OECD data, noting that the 30% cap has been in effect, more or less, since 2010 as an advisory target rather than a law.
Meloni’s government has argued that the excessive concentration of students who do not speak Italian can make integration more difficult. This argument is supported by the fact that when Italian-speaking classmates surround a child, they learn the language and integrate faster; the job of teaching the child does not fall solely on the teacher, as the environment also helps.
The cap will apply only to first-year classes from 2027/28, and existing classes will not be broken up. In primary school, the 30% rule applies to pupils with non-Italian citizenship who were not born in Italy or who have not attended at least two years of Italian preschool. In lower and upper secondary schools, it applies to students with non-Italian citizenship who have not completed at least three years in Italy’s national education system. Redistribution, coordinated by local education authorities, must also follow a proximity principle, the government said, meaning the rule does not apply where no nearby schools can be found.
The decree also provides additional funding for schools where the limit cannot be maintained. From 2027, EUR 3.4 million is allocated, rising to approximately EUR 14.14 million annually from 2028, primarily for extracurricular activities designed to strengthen basic Italian-language skills. The decree deserves serious credit, since it aims to tackle a real problem; it has drawn much criticism and media scrutiny.
The 30% Limit: Integration Through Separation
The most controversial and questionable part of the new decree is the 30% limit on certain pupils with non-Italian citizenship. At first glance, the policy appears to be a language policy. Valditara insists that the criterion is knowledge of Italian, not citizenship. Yet the rule does not test Italian at all: it is not based on a language test required of all children; it is more complex than that. Through this system, citizenship is the criterion used to categorize children.
This creates a problem: foreign citizens who speak fluent Italian can be placed in this category. A twelve-year-old who arrived from Romania two years ago, has attended Italian school since, and speaks the language well still counts toward the ceiling until the third year is completed.
On the other hand, it also creates an unfair playing field because many people hold Italian passports but may not speak Italian fluently. A child who holds an Italian passport through descent and arrives from abroad without a word of Italian does not count at all. The Italian government is therefore attempting to solve a linguistic and educational problem through a demographic and administrative category.
A proxy is cheaper than testing every child, which may explain the choice, but a short language assessment at enrolment would target the stated problem directly. This is a widely used practice when separating students into beginner and advanced classes for secondary language learning, or even other subjects such as maths. That also matters legally, as the EU-law section below explains.
The practical problems of this policy stem from the fact that different regions of Italy have varying distributions of foreign pupils. In regions with high concentrations of pupils who would fall under the 30% rule, they must be redistributed. The proximity safeguards are real: placement must take account of the family’s home and documented needs, such as caring for a child with a disability. But they leave the central question open. What counts as “nearby”, and who pays for the journey? The decree does not specify the proximity threshold used to define the radius, and it guarantees no school transport, so in a large city a “nearby” school can still mean a long and expensive commute for a seven-year-old. Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, has said he fears some classes or schools may have to close.
The objective of this decree is to improve integration; however, how it is carried out may create bigger problems. The government is right to fund language support; however, the funds it allocates are modest compared with the scale of this decree’s effect. Instead of moving children between schools, the resources should be allocated towards more specialized teachers and more language support.
The Effect of the Decree on European Citizens
The most concerning part of the decree is regarding mostly Romanian and other European workers’ children, because the largest foreign community living in Italy is Romanian, with over 1 million residents. The decree is not only a third-country measure. EU citizens are non-Italian citizens as well, and as Valditara has stated, the rule does not distinguish between EU and non-EU nationals.
Under Article 165 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), Member States retain responsibility for the content of teaching and the organization of their education systems. However, they must exercise that authority in a way consistent with other obligations under EU law. Article 18 TFEU prohibits discrimination on grounds of nationality within the scope of the Treaties. In contrast, Article 10 of Regulation (EU) No 492/2011 protects the right of children of EU migrant workers who meet its conditions to access general education under the same conditions as nationals. These provisions do not automatically make the decree unlawful. The central legal question is whether its criteria can be justified and applied consistently with the relevant equal-treatment obligations.
The main issue is proportionality. The decree uses criteria including citizenship and schooling history rather than directly assessing a pupil’s Italian-language proficiency. Italy may argue that the measure pursues legitimate aims, such as promoting linguistic integration and preventing classroom segregation. However, the criteria may not accurately reflect individual language needs: a fluent pupil and a recent arrival with little or no Italian could be treated similarly.
Assessing language proficiency and providing targeted support may be a more direct way to achieve the same objective. However, whether such alternatives would be legally required depends on the circumstances and the applicable rules. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights may also be relevant where the case falls within the scope of EU law: Article 14 protects the right to education, Article 21 addresses discrimination, including on grounds of language and membership of a national minority, and Article 22 requires respect for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. Article 51(1) limits the Charter’s application to Member States to situations in which they are implementing EU law. Ultimately, the legal assessment would depend on the decree’s precise wording, its implementation and the justification offered by the Italian authorities. Affected families may be able to challenge decisions through the Italian courts, which could refer questions of EU law to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
How Far Does It Reach?
Reporting so far describes the ceiling as applying to first-year classes in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools. It is a school measure, and nothing suggests it reaches universities, so English-language degree programs and exchange students appear to remain outside its scope.
Several questions remain open until the final text and implementing rules are published. Do international schools count, even though most pupils are foreign and lessons are not in Italian? Italy also has protected minorities with their own schools, such as German-language schools in South Tyrol: how does a criterion built on Italian proficiency apply there?
That sensitivity is familiar in Central and Eastern Europe, where minority-language education is a political issue in its own right. And what happens to bilingual state-school tracks, or classes with some subjects taught in English: does a pupil on such a track count toward the ceiling?
Once these laws are in force, it will become clear what this means for EU citizens and how it will affect people working in Italy whose children attend school. While the law is not yet in practice, what will happen is still speculative. Parliament’s conversion process, due to begin in the Senate on 7 October, is the moment when amendments would clarify these points.
Communication Enhancement by the Policy
Meloni’s policy aims to address the education system challenges that migration brings. Language sufficiency is a key element of integration. Children’s circumstances and their school environment also shape the relationship between schools and parents. Without an effective communication network, parents and schools can face problems.
The decree aims to address this problem by providing parents with language-learning opportunities. Schools can refer cases to local social services when persistent language barriers among foreign parents are interfering with the child’s educational development, integration, behavior, or compliance with agreements between the family and the school.
The parent can then be placed in a free Italian-language program at a provincial adult-education center (CPIA) aimed at reaching at least A2 level. The government stresses that this targets serious cases and excludes parents with age-related, medical, or disability-related limits on learning, certified by a public doctor. Failure to attend, without a recognized justification, can eventually result in a fine between EUR 200 and EUR 1,000.
The aim is hard to dispute: a parent who cannot follow what the school says cannot support the child, and language is central to integration. The weaker point is the instrument. Translation tools and online school portals make everyday communication easier than it used to be, so the practical gap the courses fill is narrower than the debate suggests. Those tools cannot replace the deeper command of the language that integration requires. That is exactly why attendance is more likely to work as an offer than as an obligation backed by fines.
Moreover, enforcing this law will create several problems. If the parent is working, how can schools ensure lessons are held outside working hours? Working hours also vary; they are not the same for everyone. If a parent has more children, sometimes even younger ones, the government cannot provide sufficient care for every single one while the parent attends these language classes. Such a parent is not unwilling to learn Italian but lacks time and childcare, and a fine provides neither. The published summaries of the decree do not say how courses and childcare will be organized or paid for. Passing a law is not enough, and the government must create conditions that make adaptation possible.
The Political and Policy Aspect
The last part of the decree prohibits wearing face-covering garments in school. The government frames this decision as a question of equality and identification. This is nothing new in Europe; many countries have enforced this law not only in schools but also in other public institutions.
The ban covers curricular and extracurricular activities and school-family meetings, so it reaches parents as well as pupils. It names the niqab and the burqa but is worded broadly enough to include other coverings, with exceptions for health or safety reasons. The fine is again EUR 200 to EUR 1,000, and when the offender is a minor, it falls on the parent. This is also the part of the decree with the most legal precedent: the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s general ban on full-face veils in 2014 (S.A.S. v. France), which makes it the measure least likely to run into legal trouble.
Meloni’s government has built much of its political identity around immigration, national identity and security. At the same time, the government faces pressure from the far right. The introduction of highly visible measures concerning foreign children, parents, and Islamic face coverings therefore has political significance beyond their direct educational impact.
How can a country that increasingly depends on immigration reconcile that dependence with a political movement that has built much of its support around controlling immigration and defending a particular conception of national identity? Whether these measures produce better integration or simply shift the visible signs of immigration elsewhere will depend less on the political language surrounding the decree and more on what happens when the policy reaches schools, teachers, parents, and children. For Central and Eastern Europeans living in Italy, it will also depend on whether the ceiling is applied in a way that respects the equal treatment EU law guarantees their children.