New scholastic year promises full teachers complement... possibly

For the first time in 10 years, the new scholastic year opens on Monday with a full complement of teachers.

Over the summer months, the Education Ministry recruited 113 teachers - 40 in primary schools, 65 in secondary schools and eight in special schools, a spokesman said, stressing that a lot of planning went into assessing the needs for this year and sourcing the teachers.

Malta Union of Teachers president John Bencini acknowledges that the forthcoming scholastic year seemed better than previous years in terms of human resources. However, he still warned the situation would have to be reviewed on the first day of school.

Since teachers in government schools did not have to give notice of termination of employment, some teachers did not inform the Education Division in advance that they would not be teaching for another year and this in order not to lose pay over the summer months, he said.

"We are faced with this stupid situation every year. We have been saying that it does not make sense but nothing is done about it. The Education Division encounters these problems at the beginning of every scholastic year, so a lot of planning would have gone into having a full complement but one can only say whether that was indeed the case after the first two days of the next scholastic year," Mr Bencini added.

A total of 34,437 students return to school on Monday, occupying 2,053 classrooms: 4,832 kindergarten students in 344 classrooms; 14,318 primary students in 804 classrooms and 15,287 secondary students in 905 classrooms.

There will be 851 teachers in primary schools, 2,011 in secondary schools and 420 kindergarten assistants. In addition, there are 1,287 learning support assistants. About 1,000 of these had their definite contracts upgraded to indefinite following talks with the teachers' union.

State schools around Malta and Gozo are administered by 101 heads or acting heads and 230 assistant heads.

mxuereb@timesofmalta.com