Freedom of movement of students and teachers

One of the EU basic principles is the freedom of movement of people and, in education, the EU implements various measures and initiatives to facilitate freedom of movement of our students and teachers both for work, as also, for continuation of their studies.

It is easy for the EU to pontificate and proclaim the principle of freedom of movement, but, to implement it fully it needs structures. Students and workers, over the years, not only found it expensive to move from one country to the other, but also found it difficult to start or continue courses without proper recognition of previous degrees and qualifications. Notwithstanding the good intentions of the EU, member states spoke different (sometimes unintelligible) languages when providing certificates, diplomas and degrees.

The EU realised that this Babel of qualifications had to be sorted out and provide adequate structures for recognition of the different qualifications given in the different member states. Because of our adhesion to the EU, Malta set up the Malta Qualifications Recognition Information Centre (MQRIC) and the Malta Qualifications Council (MQC) which help in the recognition of our degrees and other qualifications in all the other EU member states.

These two structures are now fully functioning in Malta and our students and workers are fully benefiting from their work. Last year, the MQRIC received 857 requests for recognition, 717 of these requests being for academic qualifications, while the rest were for vocational qualifications. Malta also had to introduce the Europass Diploma Supplement and Europass Mobility as well as Euro Guidance and Eures to help our students find recognition to their qualifications and opportunities for further study or work. The University has already introduced Europass in one of its courses and, eventually, all courses would adopt the same measure.

Furthermore, because of our adhesion to the EU, Malta's students now find it much cheaper to follow courses in EU countries as they are now treated similarly as local students thereby, in most cases, no tuition fees are paid. In pre-accession times, our students would have found it financially prohibitive to follow even first-degree courses in the EU (especially in the UK) as they were obliged to pay foreigners' tuition fees.

I am sure that, over the years, there were hundreds of Maltese students who were capable academically of following these courses, but could not join because of the excessive fees. Accession to the EU has opened all the EU universities' doors and other educational institutions wide open for our students and now they are treated on the same level as the locals are. In Malta's case (because of our limited opportunities) this new opportunity is even more relevant.

An action of the Socrates programme, which is not publicised enough locally, is the Language Assistant's Action which is intended to provide newly graduated language teachers to spend a considerable time in an EU country teaching their native language to other students for whom this language is foreign. It is obviously beneficial for our students to listen to the language being taught to them spoken as the native speakers do. At present, Malta has a French and Spanish teacher in our schools teaching our students their native language. However, it is a pity this Action has not been promoted well enough among our teachers to teach in an EU country under this Action.

Funds for educational infrastructure

Malta also benefited substantially from its adhesion to the EU by the European Social Fund (ESF), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) the Cohesion Fund and Interreg funds devoted to education and training. Our government prioritised education and training for early receipt of these funds to update and upgrade facilities at MCAST and ETC and also improve and extend the provision of training courses for our students. These funds complemented the other funds which the government provides from local sources and thus hastened the completion of these projects which otherwise would have had to wait in the queue until their turn was up or else eat away from other projects.

Between 2004 and 2006, Malta benefited 18.4 million euros from the EU cohesion and structural funds. These funds were allocated for education Infrastructure (€3.4 million) for projects which include provision of education and training facilities, extension of ETC's Skills Development centre and the construction of additional floors at MCAST.

Other funds (€12.6 million) were allocated for Human Resource Development which included courses at MCAST, ETC schemes, measures for Equal Opportunities, Social Inclusion, Life Long Learning in ICT. Due to these funds, between 2005-2006, more than 7,000 people were trained as a result of 37 projects.

In Gozo, €737,828 were allocated for the extension to the Gozo Centre for Arts and Crafts and for the Crafts Development Centre, while €1,341,393 were allocated to the building of the ITS premises. Furthermore, the EU provided €502,145 as funds for projects in Human Resources to improve employability through vocational training. Recently, the Minister of Education, Youth and Employment announced that the EU will give €3.5 million for the upgrading of the laboratories in our Secondary Schools. These funds will impact our educational provision as Malta will then have well-equipped laboratories for the use by our students.

Such allocation of EU funds for education and training alleviates government's burden for provision of funds for Ministry of Education and, thus surely, impacting positively on our education provision. In the Budget Estimates 2007, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment will avail itself of about Lm10 million EU funds to be used at University, MCAST and other purposes. Without these EU funds the government would either have had to increase taxation or else leave these projects in abeyance. The education sector (through the University) benefited from €1,191,205 grants of funds under the Interreg Fund for which Malta also contributed €390,485. These funds enabled various University teachers to participate in academic projects with EU counterparts, thereby also contributing to the development of knowledge for our educators.

Though this has been a rather sketchy study of the Malta's adhesion to the EU and its impact in education and training, it can easily be deduced that Malta has benefited substantially from its EU membership in education and training. The first years of our EU membership were beneficial to our education and training provisions and, I am sure, that our students and teachers will continue to benefit even more in the coming years.

It can be concluded that Malta's accession impacted positively on our education and training provision by raising our educational standards, internationalisation of our education system, provision of funds for educational infrastructure and assisting mobility of students and teachers within the EU.

Mr Sammut is the former national coordinator of the European Union Programmes Unit of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment.