The travails of Cottonera schools

The publication of this year's Junior Lyceum examination results has provoked a wave of articles and comments about the poor results obtained by candidates from the Cottonera state primary schools.

Overall 50.5 per cent passed the exam but in Cottonera this percentage dwindled down to 28.5 per cent, with passes of 46 per cent of candidates from Kalkara, 29 per cent from those in Vittoriosa, 26 per cent from those in Senglea and a nil return from Cospicua that has the dubious 'distinction' of having no candidate that obtained the pass mark. Other localities with similar low pass marks are Xghajra (11 per cent), Qrendi (26 per cent) and Floriana (28.5 per cent).

As happens everywhere else in the world, the worst schools are mostly found in the socially depressed areas of the country - even though in Malta we do not have the nightmare situations found in inner city schools of the UK and the US.

Wind back six years, to the year when the current crop of 11+ youngsters started their formal schooling and you find a very interesting report written by Fr John Avellino and published in Il-Ġens Illum of May 4, 2002. The report was headlined: Għalliema ma jridux jgħallmu fil-Kottonera (Teachers don't want to teach in Cottonera) and carried a sub-title saying: F'Bormla nofs l-għalliema jinbidlu kull sena; fl-Isla f'sena l-Kap ta' l-Iskola nbidlet tliet darbiet (Half the teachers in Cospicua are replaced every year; in Senglea the head of school was replaced three times).

I remember reading this report and reacting to it, mostly because it also quoted the president of the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) stating that experienced teachers with the best training should be posted wherever there are particular social problems. I reacted because this flew in the face of the everyday pressures - and demands - that the MUT exerts on the Education Division.

Simply put, part of the problem is the legacy of the incredible number of political transfers that teachers were subjected to at the end of the infamous teachers' industrial action and subsequent lock-out in the autumn of 1984. After the change of government in 1987, the MUT insisted on a transparent procedure on teacher allocations and transfers. As always happens in the civil service, the only parameters not considered subjective were seniority and whether the teacher had a permanent or temporary warrant. A system was then devised whereby at the end of each scholastic year teachers submit requests for transfers - if they so wish - and allocations were made strictly according to the 'priorities' of seniority and type of warrant.

To complicate matters, the number of students from Cottonera graduating as teachers every year is much less than the number of teachers required in the area; which means that requests for transfers away from Cottonera are also motivated by the incentive of 'a school nearer home' besides the incentive of 'a better school'. In the long run these factors led to a situation where Cottonera schools ended up with the least experienced and least qualified teachers.

Problem schools in socially depressed areas are not particular to Malta and it is not only Maltese teachers who try to avoid such schools or try to move away from them. Our situation is worse because - contrary to what happens in other countries - in Malta it is not the schools that choose teachers but the teachers that choose schools.

In the case of newly appointed heads of school who show that they are not up to it - selection boards not being infallible - no appointment is ever terminated at the end of the customary probationary period. Instead the authorities tend to 'utilise' them by allocating them to some school that is already 'in ruins' rather than provoking the 'ruin' of a school that is performing well. This continues to exacerbate the problem.

In Malta teachers are part of the public service, even though they belong to a very particular stream of this service. They are therefore employees of the government and not of local school administrations as abroad. This is the crux of the problem.

The decentralisation of our education system has made great strides from the humble steps initiated when I was minister responsible for education. The grouping of areas under different colleges enjoying an amount of autonomy was a very bold step taken under the stewardship of Louis Galea.

The next step is the hardest: hiving off the employment of teachers from the government to area school administrations. These would have a better possibility of weeding out the incompetents and rewarding teachers who carry out their job successfully. We do not lack good, motivated and conscientious teachers but, more often than not, 'seniority' overrides all other considerations.

The MUT will, of course, resist this move. It is already misleadingly describing it as the 'privatisation' of education. In my view until such a move is carried out, the travails of schools in depressed areas such as Cottonera cannot but remain a blot in the state educational system - to the detriment of future generations.

micfal@maltanet.net