Italy is preparing legislation to place a limit on the number of pupils without Italian citizenship who can be placed in the same classroom, putting the issue of school integration at the centre of a new political debate across Europe.

The proposal was announced on Sunday, September 20, by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The planned measures would also include stronger language-integration requirements for some parents of foreign pupils and restrictions on face-covering garments such as the burqa and niqab in schools.

For Spain, however, there is currently no equivalent government proposal to introduce a nationality-based classroom quota.

Italy's proposed classroom limit

Meloni said the Italian Government intends to introduce a legal limit on the number of foreign pupils in individual classes. The exact number that would apply under the new legislation has not yet been announced.

The proposal is linked by the Italian Government to the integration of pupils who arrive in the country with limited knowledge of Italian. Meloni has argued that schools need to be able to provide effective language education while avoiding situations in which Italian-speaking pupils become a minority within their own classrooms.

The proposal remains at the announcement stage. It has not yet become a new nationwide classroom rule.

Italy already has a 30% guideline

The idea of limiting the concentration of pupils without Italian citizenship is not completely new.

Italy issued a ministerial circular in January 2010 setting a general guideline that pupils with non-Italian citizenship should normally account for no more than 30% of a class. The guidance allowed regional education authorities to increase or reduce the threshold in certain circumstances, including where pupils already had sufficient Italian-language skills.

Italian Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said earlier in September that the existing 30% indication had not been consistently implemented and argued that legislation was needed to provide clearer and more enforceable rules.

That distinction is important because the 30% figure should not be described as a newly introduced cap in 2026. It is an older administrative guideline that the Italian Government is now proposing to reinforce through legislation.

Spain has a different classroom reform

Spain is already moving ahead with legislation to reduce the number of pupils in classrooms, but the measure is not based on nationality.

The Spanish Government's education bill proposes a maximum of 22 pupils per class in Primary education and 25 in compulsory secondary education. The changes are designed to be introduced progressively, beginning with the 2027-28 academic year, with full implementation scheduled for the 2031-32 school year.

The legislation applies to the overall number of pupils in a class. It does not establish a separate maximum for foreign pupils.

No Spanish nationality quota has been announced

There is currently no indication in the Spanish Government's classroom-ratio legislation that Spain intends to copy Italy's proposed nationality-based approach.

The bill before Spain's Parliament focuses on overall classroom size and also contains provisions concerning pupils with special educational needs. Its stated framework does not establish a limit based on citizenship.

Any future decision by Spain to introduce a separate nationality-based quota would therefore represent a new policy rather than part of the classroom-ratio reform currently being processed.

Foreign pupils make up 12.9% of Spain's school population

The issue is significant in Spain because the number of pupils without Spanish nationality has continued to grow.

Official figures for the 2024-25 school year record 1,125,860 foreign pupils across Spain's non-university education system. They represented 12.9% of all pupils.

The proportion varies considerably between autonomous communities, reflecting different population and migration patterns across the country.

The Balearic Islands record one of Spain's highest shares

The Balearic Islands are particularly relevant to the debate.

According to the latest available national education statistics, 19.0% of pupils in the Balearic Islands were foreign nationals in the 2024-25 school year. That was the highest percentage among Spain's autonomous communities in the same dataset.

The figure does not mean that 19% of pupils are placed together in individual classrooms. National and regional statistics measure the overall share of foreign pupils, not the composition of every individual class.

For Ibiza and the wider Balearic Islands, classroom distribution, language support and the allocation of pupils between schools therefore remain separate questions from the national percentage of foreign pupils.

Language remains a central issue

Both the Italian proposal and Spain's wider education debate also highlight the difference between nationality and language.

A pupil who does not hold Italian or Spanish nationality may already speak the language of the country fluently. Conversely, nationality alone does not establish a pupil's language ability.

This is one reason the precise design of any future Italian legislation will matter. The existing Italian framework has already recognised exceptions linked to language proficiency, while Spain's current national reform does not introduce a nationality-based criterion.

What happens next

Italy's proposal will need to be translated into formal legislation before its practical impact can be assessed. Until the government publishes the text, the precise cap, exemptions and method for distributing pupils between schools remain unclear.

In Spain, the classroom-ratio bill is following its own parliamentary process. For now, there is no confirmed Spanish measure matching Italy's proposed limit on foreign pupils per class.

The two countries are therefore addressing classroom composition through different approaches: Italy is considering a specific legal restriction based on non-national pupils, while Spain is pursuing a broader reduction in the total number of pupils allowed in classrooms.