Italy announces its “biggest language training and international mobility programme ever”

The Italian government is about to operationalise the largest language learning and mobility scholarship programme in the country’s history. Announced earlier this month, the scholarship programme will fund 150,000 Italian high-school students (at the upper-secondary level) and 15,000 accompanying teachers to study and live abroad in another European country.

The programme will draw €420 million from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), which support cohesion and equality across member states, and it will be administered by the Ministry of Education. Students will see their travel, living costs, food, and accommodation covered under the terms of the scholarship.

Minister for Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced the initiative together at a conference called “Italian students in Europe.” Details about timing will be released in the coming months.

Most scholarship students will go for two-week periods for language studies or immersion in a foreign high school environment, but in some cases, longer durations will be possible. While away, students may participate in a range of academic and social activities, including visits to companies and other workplaces.

Speaking at the conference, Prime Minister Meloni urged the audience to consider the new initiative as more than an opportunity to learn another language:

“Living and studying in another country, even if only for a few weeks or months, means learning to deal with new situations, becoming more independent, and engaging with people who have different customs, ideas and cultures from your own. It therefore means expanding your minds and your ability to understand others. It means building self-confidence, learning to cope and broadening your horizons. Furthermore, for us it means enriching our community, because when the young people participating in this project come back, they will bring back much more than just better knowledge of and fluency in a foreign language. They will bring back new ideas, new friendships, greater self-confidence and a broader view of the world, all of which certainly represents an asset for them, but it will also be valuable for their friends, their families, their classmates and the whole of Italy.”

The scholarships will be awarded based on merit but also using the ISEE (equivalent economic situation indicator) to ensure that students from all backgrounds can participate regardless of income. Prime Minister Meloni spoke to the importance of language learning for removing barriers across class:

“Today, we live in an increasingly interconnected world. Universities, employers, research institutions, and companies are looking more and more for people who are able to navigate international contexts, and speaking another language, particularly having a good knowledge of English, is very important. However, it is even more important to be able to use that language in real life, and you can’t do that by simply learning a language from textbooks; you can only do that by managing to experience that language, immersed in the context in which it is spoken.

This is why we decided to invest in this initiative, above all because we believe our talented young people deserve the same opportunities as all their peers in Europe, for example. We believe that, in this day and age, young people’s talent cannot and must not be limited by a language barrier.”

The significance of this new mobility programme arises in part from the fact that Italy is already a major EU sending market for language studies, and is, for example, a top market for English language training providers in the UK, Ireland, and Malta.

To be more specific: Italy was the second-largest sending market for Irish ELT schools in 2025, accounting for 14% of student weeks delivered that year. It was the leading source marketing for UK ELT in 2025 as well where Italian students booked just over 14% of all English language learning weeks. And in Malta, Italy was again the second-largest sending market for 2025 with 12% of student weeks for the year.

For its part, English UK was quick to recognise the importance of the new €420 million scholarship programme and signalled to its members that it is already “working with the Department for Business & Trade and the British Embassy Rome to present a unified UK offer.”

For additional background, please see:

• “Italy rises as a study destination but struggles to retain foreign graduates”
• “Malta: Non-EU students keeping ELT weeks stable in the face of falling enrolment from Europe”
• “UK’s ELT sector reports declining enrolments through first quarter of 2026”
• “Ireland’s ELT sector reports modest growth in student numbers but weeks are down amid ‘real and consequential’ challenges”