Malta’s teachers ‘paid less’ than Europe’s

Low salaries, lack of resources in schools and reform fatigue were not taken into consideration in a report concluding that Maltese teachers spend less time at school compared to European counterparts, the Malta Union of Teachers said.

...working hours are not...up for discussion

The union insisted that Maltese teachers worked just as hard as their colleagues in other European countries, insisting that it would not budge over working hours.

“Working hours for teaching grades in Malta are at par with most other EU and Mediterranean countries. Working hours... are agreed upon in agreements between the employers and the union... Both the (Education) Ministry and the union have declared that working hours are not an issue up for discussion,” the union said.

A report issued this week by Eurydice, a European network of education systems and policies, found that the availability of Maltese teachers in public and private schools in the 2010/11 scholastic year stood at 28 hours a week, one of the lowest in the EU.

This included 26 hours of teaching time for primary teachers and 20 hours for teachers at secondary level.

The report did not take preparation and correction time into consideration.

In 2010/11, teachers in Portugal were available at school for 35 hours a week, followed by 32 hours in the UK and Sweden and 30 hours in Germany, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus.

Other member states like Estonia, Latvia, France, Denmark and Romania consider a 40-hour week to be the minimum of a teacher’s working week.

The MUT said the report failed to take various factors into account, including the poor working environment in older schools and reform fatigue faced by teachers as a result of various ongoing changes.

Teachers’ salaries were “much lower” than those in the countries mentioned in the report and there was lack of resources in schools that forced teachers to buy their own teaching material.

Over the past years, the MUT has resisted calls to raise the number of school hours for teachers. The suggestion was made to entice more women to return to employment as they would be able to spend more time at work if their children were still at school.

“If we had to change the hours, half the teachers will leave because teaching will no longer be worth it,” MUT president Kevin Bonello had said. About 80 per cent of teachers consisted of women who chose the career because of the hours and conditions, he noted.

Mr Bonello said that last year the union had reached an agreement with the government allowing activity teachers to be employed to carry out extracurricular activities after school hours.