Language students should be allowed to work in Malta, as an incentive to stay here longer, the Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations Malta (Feltom) has said.
It made its suggestion to the authorities in view of a drop in the number of weeks spent by English language students in Malta.
In 2014, EFL students stayed a total of 245,587 weeks, but this dropped to 238,481 the following year and to 229,005 last year. The average length of stay dropped, from 3.2 weeks to just three.
Feltom CEO Genevieve Abela described the drop as “dramatic”, blaming inconvenient visa applications and a ban on work.
The main problems apply to students from beyond Europe, who tend to come here for longer stays in the less busy parts of the year, greatly easing the seasonal pressures faced by the sector.
July 2016 attracted over 19,000 students, compared to just 1,000 in December – a major hurdle for the sector, where only 542 of the 2,000 people employed work full time.
Ms Abela said certain things had already changed for the better and that many of these concessions – like longer-stay students getting a visa extension rather than having to apply for temporary residency – will certainly help.
“But the fact that there is so little understanding of this sector is disappointing,” she said, noting that Feltom was not on the council of the recently established Education Malta.
The fact that there is so little understanding of this sector is disappointing
“We are the ones who are able to advise on the internationalisation of education in Malta. We should sit down with the university and other campuses to create pathway programmes that students can follow once they finish their English language courses.”
EFL schools have invested substantial amounts in marketing, in collaboration with the Malta Tourism Authority, trying to target more diverse markets and clients who wish to stay longer. “The marketing must be working at some level, because the numbers from Brazil, Columbia and South Korea have gone up. But they are clearly not staying as long as they should be,” she said
Ms Abela wants to see two things change: Feltom believes that longer-stay students should be allowed to work, albeit for a limited number of hours, and it wants learning to be made easier for what it calls ‘walk-ins’, visitors who come to Malta and only then decide to start English language studies.
“We know that Latin Americans would stay longer if they had the opportunity to work as they have in other English language destinations. As it stands, even a university student on a two-year study visa cannot legally work in Malta. And there is clearly a demand for them. The hospitality industry does not have enough people, and almost all of it employs foreigners.”
The importance of Latin American markets is significant: Colombia accounts for only 1.4 per cent of all students but 6.4 per cent of total weeks, as its nationals spend the most time on average (13.5 weeks per student).
Compare this to Italy, where 19,000 students came from last year but only stayed a total of 33,564 weeks.
China is another important market, and Feltom plans to organise a carefully targeted trade mission there in the coming year.
The whole issue of visas is a major bottleneck. It does not help that the Maltese Foreign Office depends on foreign embassies to process Maltese visas for nationals from places like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Ms Abela explains that Maltese visas are certainly not given priority over those of an embassy’s own citizens.