Teachers have a right to teach and students have a right to learn. Let me make it very clear from the start that the Malta Union of Teachers fully agrees with what the Education Ministry stated recently that "thousands of students and teachers go to school daily in a serene environment".

But, then, we have the other side of the coin and it is precisely in this area where we are failing. What is happening at Naxxar boys' secondary is only the tip of the iceberg. The situation there has become unbearable as students address teachers in an obscene way and resort to violence. Teachers' cars have been damaged and bullying against teachers takes place also out of school. Recently, for example, a teacher in another school and who resides at Ħamrun discovered that during the night someone had vandalised his residence. The police had later found out that the culprits were 14-year-old students who attended the teacher's same school.

If the MUT had to issue press releases on bullying and violence against teachers then it would have to employ a full-timer. This phenomenon is not bound solely to government schools. A church school teacher had her car scratched and the school had to pay for the damages. Many teachers are constrained to park their cars far away from the school premises to avoid similar incidents. Two years ago, a teacher at St Joseph Junior Lyceum was punched in the face in front of all the students in the classroom. Some teachers go to work each morning knowing that they will be targeted by bullies. A few years ago, a facilitator was beaten up just because she had informed the pupil's mother that her son needed attention as his hair was full of nits.

An MUT survey carried out two years ago among 1,000 teachers found out that 96 per cent thought pupil behaviour had deteriorated over the past years. No wonder more teachers are considering leaving the profession. Teachers are not motivated by their conditions and they lack support for dealing with students who misbehave excessively. Teachers and their heads are just impotent. Teachers report cases of serious misbehaviour and the answer they get is: "What can we do about it?

Let us all remember that, under framework directive 89/391, all employers have a legal obligation to ensure the occupational safety and health of all workers. This duty also applies to problems of work-related stress insofar as they entail a risk to health and safety. With regard to the implementation of the risk assessment system for work-related stress in schools, only seven countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden) out of 27 (EU and EFTA) countries have implemented such a system in schools.

Teachers are undoubtedly among the professions with the highest level of work-related stress. The main stressors are related to working organisation and processes as well as to the working conditions and environment, workload, working intensity, class sizes and the never-ending extra-curricular activities. For this reason, the MUT considers that this subject merits immediate attention.

Teachers' work-related stress is an issue to be dealt with within the social dialogue sphere. The Ministry of Education, the MUT, parents, teachers and all those involved need to get together to try and eradicate this scourge. The MUT calls on the government to move from rhetoric to action. The MUT has set out clearly what it expects from the education authorities: in a nutshell, concrete measures to deal with bullying and violence against teachers.

If there is one area where the MUT has succeeded, it has been in building awareness. The MUT's challenge now, more than ever, is to translate awareness into action. It is essential that the safety and well-being of teachers, kindergarten assistant, learning support assistants and all teaching grades is looked after. Teacher stress and burnout is the major occupational illness among teachers. There is little acknowledgement among policy-makers of the pervasiveness of stress in teaching and its impact on the quality of teachers' personal lives, on their classroom practice and on the school community in general, and national strategies are seriously lacking in this country.

Heads of school and senior management teams cannot continue to be left alone. They require the necessary support and structures. The head of school and his assistants at Naxxar boys' secondary school are overworked and stressed too. They have given everything and their dedication, perseverance and hard work are witnessed by all the staff there. They spend hours after school but I very much doubt how much appreciation they get. Like all heads in other schools they are not looking for appreciation and sympathy after all but they expect support, an adequate salary, a reasonable allowance and esteem.

Finally, the MUT and all teachers expect the education authorities to immediately implement without further procrastination what had been agreed upon last July between the MUT and the government and issue the long-awaited call for application for the college prefects of discipline and not resort to half-baked measures. The reform had spoken about the creation of learning zones in schools, where pupils with difficult behaviour would be educated with the help of social workers, youth workers and educational psychologists. Let us wake up before it is too late.

Mr Bencini is president of the MUT.