The Government is looking into the possibility of introducing the concept of home schooling, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said yesterday.

Without going into the specifics, Mr Bartolo told a well-attended consultation meeting on education that changes to the Education Act were being considered to give State schools more autonomy.

He acknowledged there was a problem of cleanliness in schools but said this was being tackled and hoped the problem would have been solved by the beginning of the next scholastic year.

The Government, he said, was also looking into the working conditions of school cleaners after one person complained that many of them had been working part-time for some 14 years.

He also acknowledged the need to build new schools but one of the first decisions he took when he became minister was to invest €15 million in upgrading the existing ones. “Some schools are in a very bad state,” he said.

Mr Bartolo said parents should be involved in the education of their children. There were studies which showed that up to 70 per cent of the child’s educational success depended on what happened outside schools, including at home.

A mother of a child with autism complained that children were being sent back home when their Learning Support Assistant called in sick. She called for the setting up of a specialised unit for autistic children.

Questioned whether it was true that Maltese children living with their parents in Brussels and Luxembourg were going to exempted from sitting for their Maltese exams, Mr Bartolo said he would look into this claim because the government was spending a lot of money to send teachers abroad to teach these children.

He stressed the importance of bilingualism and that children ought to be well-versed in both Maltese and English. One of the main challenges was to make education interesting for schoolchildren and teachers alike. A lot of work had to be done and new initiatives taken on the continuous development of teachers. Did teachers know enough about conditions such as dyslexia and autism, he asked.

Other issues brought up during the meeting included the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology and the reintroduction of vocational schools.

Sport was also on the agenda yesterday, with Parliamentary Secretary for Sports Stefan Buontempo saying an inventory of facilities around the island was being compiled to see what needed to be done in this sector.

He said some sports associations were promised public land, including some in a quarry, but the Administration was not happy with this. These agreements were made by the previous government before the election.

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