The first autumn rains made way for darts of sunshine yesterday morning, perhaps symbolically for some prospective student teachers, as the Faculty of Education announced that further teaching practice placements had been secured in certain B.Ed. subject areas.

This means that limits initially placed on the number of places available in these courses will be eased, allowing more students to join.

Although it remains unclear precisely how many more placements have been made available, an Education Ministry spokesman said the increase would “drastically reduce” the problem.

The announcement comes on the back of a hectic couple of days for the Faculty of Education, which last Friday had declared that it would be restricting admissions to certain B.Ed. and PGCE courses due to a lack of teaching practice placements.

Despite 213 applications to the B.Ed. primary teacher course, only 87 places had been made available. The number of applicants this year, the Ministry said, was three times higher than that of the previous three years.

The new teaching practice placements have been made available through a combination of measures. A number of private schools have agreed to offer more placements, on the condition that teachers remain present in the classroom throughout the duration of the student’s placement. Under the current system, student-teachers teach unsupervised.

Various amendments to the teaching practice system have also been announced. Teachers with less than three years’ experience will be assigned student-teachers; an increased number of placements will be offered in Gozitan schools; and supply teachers will also be assigned student-teachers.

Communicating the increase in placements to the press, Labour education spokesman Evarist Bartolo said the discussions had also touched upon modifying the B.Ed. and PGCE course structures, as well as reforming the current teaching practice system. One such proposal, Mr Bartolo said, was that of reducing the length of teaching practice placements.

According to Mr Bartolo, Education Minister Dolores Cristina would like to “tweak” the stipend system in order to incentivise students to study certain courses rather than others. The current stipend system already has such provisions for science subjects. Students opting for these subjects receive a higher monthly stipend than students in other courses.

Ms Cristina, Mr Bartolo said, had also proposed raising entry requirements to B.Ed. and PGCE courses – a claim which was denied outright by a Ministry spokesman.

Any such changes would nevertheless be of little relevance to the current situation. University regulations stipulate that changes to entry requirements can only come into force two years after being announced.

While it is still not clear exactly how many additional placements have been secured, or in which subject areas, the ministry said discussions would carry on over the coming days in order to secure as many places as possible.