New government plans to introduce a 30% limit per class on immigrant pupils will help integration, Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said Tuesday.
''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. There have been cases in which entire classes are made up of immigrant students, which is not ideal for true integration''.
The 30% limit is set to be introduced on an experimental basis for the 2009-2010 school year and will become a requirement for 2010-2011.
The plans drew criticism from ARCI, a left-leaning association involved in charity work, whose immigrant pointman Filippo Miraglia said they were unconstitutional and ''impractical''.
''Who decides how and where to move the 'excess' immigrant students?'' he said, adding that the costs of providing free transport to move Italian students from a school in one part of the city to another would be prohibitive.
''It's madness and would cost city councils a heap of money,'' Miraglia said.
Guglielmo Epifani, secretary-general of Italy's biggest, left-leaning CGIL union, meanwhile said the new limit may mean the government is backing down on a controversial proposal by the Northern League to introduce classes exclusively for immigrants instead of allowing them to enter directly into the Italian system.
In October the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) approved the proposal, which would require foreign children to pass a specially designed entrance test before being admitted to schools.
While those who passed would be able to join 'normal' classes, children who failed would be placed in so-called 'bridge' classes, where they would follow Italian language, law and citizenship courses as well as a basic curriculum until they could pass the test.
According to the Italian Association of Italian Municipal Councils (ANCI), there are currently 690,000 foreign students from 190 different countries in Italian schools.
