Premier's proposals trigger sharp political reaction and come as she faces a challenge from far-right rival Roberto Vannacci ahead of national elections.Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has announced that the government is preparing legislation to set a maximum number of foreign students allowed in each classroom and to ban the burqa and niqab in schools.  Speaking on Sunday at Fenix, the youth festival of her right-wing Fratelli d'Italia party in Rome, Meloni said the council of ministers would soon be discussing a measure that would "introduce by law the maximum number of foreign students per class".   She also said parents of foreign pupils with "serious problems of school integration" would be required to learn Italian, and confirmed a ban on the burqa and niqab, the full-body and full-face veils worn by a small minority of Muslim women.   Defending the plans, Meloni said it was "unacceptable" for Italian children to feel like a minority in their own classrooms, dismissing criticism of the idea as coming from people "who preach from their living rooms" while sending their own children to schools where the issue does not arise. Echoing the education minister Meloni's remarks closely track recent positions taken by education minister Giuseppe Valditara, of the right-wing Lega party, who has for months floated a ban on the burqa in schools, tougher enforcement of a cap on foreign pupils and the possible revocation of residency permits for parents who keep their children out of school.   Italy already has a non-binding 30 per cent cap on foreign pupils per class, introduced by a 2010 ministerial circular under then education minister Mariastella Gelmini, though it is frequently disregarded and comes with exemptions. What a new law would change in practice remains unclear. Timing The push for a binding cap follows a parliamentary question filed days earlier by Rossano Sasso, an MP for Futuro Nazionale, the party founded by former army general and MEP Roberto Vannacci, who has emerged as Meloni's most direct rival on the nationalist right and has already voiced support for the measures she announced.   Some commentators have noted that burqas and niqabs are worn by very few women in Italy, viewing the proposal as carrying more symbolic than practical weight, aimed at outflanking Vannacci ahead of the national election expected in 2027. Opposition and union pushback Antonio Decaro, the centre-left president of the southern Puglia region and former mayor of Bari, posted a photo of himself in a multi-ethnic Bari schoolyard, writing that in the picture he saw "children, first and foremost… happy children" and that "in schools, no one should feel like a minority, no one should feel foreign," adding that the constitution says the same.   Angelo Bonelli of the Greens and Left Alliance (AVS) accused Meloni of "chasing the neo-fascist right of AfD and Vannacci" instead of addressing low teacher pay, while constitutional law professor Salvatore Curreri told news agency ANSA that Article 34 of the Italian constitution guarantees schooling for all children, including foreigners, and warned that overly restrictive measures risked breaching that right.   Teaching unions, which clashed with Valditara over similar proposals earlier this year - the FLC-CGIL's Gianna Fracassi branded them a shift "from integration to assimilation" - are expected to renew their opposition once the measure is formally presented.   The government has not yet set a date for the bill to reach the council of ministers.   Photo credit: Marco Iacobucci Epp / Shutterstock.com