As of today, covering the face is banned in all Italian schools. President Sergio Mattarella has signed the decree from Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government, and the rule is short: pupils' faces must remain recognisable. In practice that means the end of Islamic veils that cover the whole face, such as the burqa and the niqab.

But the veil is only the headline. The deeper cut comes from the 2027/2028 school year: in the first year of each level of schooling, no more than 30 percent of pupils may be children of foreign origin who do not speak Italian well enough. The quota applies to children without Italian citizenship, who were not born in Italy and did not attend an Italian nursery for at least two years. In secondary schools, pupils need at least three years of schooling in Italy to stay out of the quota.

Parents who struggle seriously with Italian could be required to attend language courses, if that is making communication with their child's school difficult. The measures were introduced by emergency decree, and parliament has to confirm them within 60 days.

The question the decree does not answer is simple: what happens to the child who ends up outside the quota? Do they go to another school, another class, the other side of the city? Children who chose neither the language nor the country they are growing up in become a number in a spreadsheet.

For decades Italy has been one of the first destinations for people from the Balkans going abroad to work. Every family that left with a school-age child knows what the first day is like in a classroom where you don't understand the language. From 2027, that child in Italy will face a quota as well as the language.

The political context is clear. Meloni has led a coalition of the hard right and conservatives since 2022, won on a promise of a tougher line on migrants, and her party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) still leads the polls ahead of elections expected next year. The pressure on her, though, is not coming from the left but from further right: the new party National Future (Futuro Nazionale) of former general Roberto Vannacci wants an even harsher approach to migration. When the right is competing with an even harder right, someone has to pay the price - and this time it is children at their school desks.