A cap on foreign pupils? “There is a problem, but…”, says Giannelli, president of the National Association of Headteachers

Rome. The 30 per cent cap on ‘non-Italian-speaking’ pupils per class – a cap that Giorgia Meloni’s government wishes to introduce by decree – is not merely a matter of mathematics, nor is it solely about what the centre-right refers to as a ‘purely linguistic criterion’. Nor is it merely about the issue itself – the measure – as the opposition has risen up in two waves: first, following President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella’s speech regarding a school system that ‘does not create ghettos’, and after the Prime Minister, in an interview with Bruno Vespa on Rai1, referred to a circular dated 1989 – the year in which Mattarella was Minister of Education – a circular cited by the Prime Minister as an argument in favour and by the opposition as an argument against. The Minister for Education, Giuseppe Valditara, has announced, in addition to the decree, a budget allocation of 14 million euros to strengthen the teaching of Italian. But on the substance of the matter, what do those who witness the situation first-hand think? “The problem exists, first and foremost at the educational level,” says Antonello Giannelli, president of the National Association of Headteachers (ANP). “If we are to teach Italian to non-Italian-speaking children – I do not use the term ‘foreigners’, because the point, as Minister Valditara has also clarified, is that these are non-Italian-speaking children – the last thing we should do is put lots of non-Italian-speaking children in a class with just a few Italian-speaking ones. If, for example, I put twenty Chinese children and five Italian children together, it is far more likely that the five Italians will learn Chinese than that the twenty Chinese children will learn Italian. We must not think that language is learnt solely or mainly from the teacher; a great deal is learnt from classmates and friends who make jokes – that is, from peers.” Second issue: “How should we handle situations where there is a neighbourhood with a high concentration of migrants – perhaps employed in local businesses – and, in particular, when forming classes for pre-primary or nursery school, with young children who do not know Italian, given that 99 per cent of children in Years 3, 4 or 5 have already learnt Italian after several years? A young child must attend a school near their home; their parents cannot travel kilometres to take them there. But if a school is located in a neighbourhood with a majority of non-Italian-speaking migrants, what should the headteacher do to comply with the cap? They cannot refuse to accept those children: the right to education must be guaranteed to all. If we could devise a system for distributing pupils to nearby schools, that would be fine, but if the capacity to absorb them were to be exhausted, the issue would arise again’. The problem we are facing, says Giannelli, ‘is that of ensuring the most effective learning possible in all subjects, and in Italian in particular. This is what schools are for: to teach as much as possible, to integrate and to include. And this is what they will continue to do, as required by the Constitution’. Giannelli highlights another factor: “In recent decades, we have witnessed, on the one hand, an increase in the proportion of the population made up of immigrants, but on the other hand also the decline in the Italian population due to the enormous demographic crisis. Taken together, these two phenomena have shifted the balance between Italian speakers and non-Italian speakers. It is right to take action to ensure that not everything is left to the goodwill of individuals. Otherwise, every teacher would do as they please, but that is not what society is based on.”