Over 57,000 children returned to school yesterday after three months of summer holidays.

They included 35,000 state school students, about 16,000 who attend Church schools and 7,000 private school pupils.

The 101 state schools also welcomed back over 5,000 employees that included 3,000 teachers, 330 heads and assistant heads, 1,300 learning support assistants and about 400 kindergarten assistants.

Education Minister Dolores Cristina and the Parliamentary Secretary for Youth, Clyde Puli visited three schools and met heads, teachers and students.

They first went to the Pembroke primary school, a new school that opened this year. They then moved on to Erin Serracino Inglott primary school for girls in Cospicua and, finally, to San Ġorġ primary for boys in Qormi.

Ms Cristina encouraged students, teachers and parents to work together to ensure a successful educational system.

The government, she said, would continue playing its part by investing strongly in education, implementing reforms and tailoring the education system to equip students with education that was relevant in today's world.

Over the next few weeks the government would officially launch the reform that aimed to do away with the streaming system that pigeonholed schoolchildren according to their overall exam performance, she added.

The reform, expected to be implemented in 2011, will move towards a more inclusive system based on each student's level of attainment in individual subjects.

The Labour Party spokesman on education, Evarist Bartolo called on the government to respect teachers' professionalism by involving them in decisions that would alter the education system and granting them resources to carry out their duties efficiently.

He added that the government should work on addressing several problems that had been accumulating over the years. These included lack of discipline, early school leavers, the need to offer more vocational education and problems arising from increased education costs.

He referred to absenteeism after recent statists showed that, during the last scholastic year, 691 school children did not attend class for up to 10 days, 440 missed between 11 and 20 days of lessons and 631 skipped three weeks of school.