Italian schools should impose a 30 per cent limit on foreigners in classes in a bid to help integration, the country's education minister has said.

"There have been cases in which entire classes are made up of immigrant students, which is not ideal for true integration," said Mariastella Gelmini, of the Right-wing People of Freedom Party.Mrs Gelmini said at Italian parents were refusing to send their children top schools with high ratios of foreign pupils, giving the example of the Carlo Pisacane primary school in Rome, where just 15 pupils out of 180 were Italian.

"This is a situation which really calls for reflection but at the same time we must also educate foreign children in Italian and teach them our constitution," she said.
"Schools are increasingly called upon to perform an integrative function and experience shows that it's not enough just to insert immigrant children in classes," she told Italian television. "In some cases, we need to balance and weigh out their presence."

The 30 per cent limit is set to be introduced on an experimental basis for the 2009-2010 school year and will become a requirement for 2010-2011. Once quotas had been reached, extra children would be offered free transport to nearby schools, she said.
However, the proposal has provoked accusations of racism.

Filippo Miraglia, of the immigrant charity ARCI, said: "This proposal is unconstitutional and impractical.
"Who decides how and where to move the 'excess' immigrant students? The cost of providing free transport to move students from a school in one part of the city to another would be prohibitive. It's madness and would cost city councils a lot of money."

Last year the Right-wing Northern League put forward a proposal to introduce classes exclusively for immigrants instead of allowing them to enter directly into the Italian system. Immigrant children who passed the exam would be able to join "normal" classes, while those who failed would be placed in "bridge" classes, where they would follow Italian language, law and citizenship courses as well as a basic curriculum until they could pass the test.

The lower house of the Italian Parliament approved the proposal, which would also require foreign children to pass a specially-designed entrance test before being admitted to schools.
However, since being approved - amid huge criticism - it has not been implemented and the proposal by Mrs Gelmini has been seen by some as a climbdown.

There are approximately 690,000 foreign students from 190 different countries in Italian schools, the majority being Albanian and Romanian, according to the Italian Association of Italian Municipal Councils (ANCI).
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