At 11 Mark*, chose mixing buckets of dust and mortar over sitting in a classroom with children his own age as he felt he was “wasting time in school”.

Luckily, his days as a child labourer are behind him and he is back at school after a four-year absence, thanks to a new educational programme targeting problem children that slip through the cracks.

The short, stocky 16-year-old, who spoke to The Sunday Times of Malta on the condition of anonymity, said he started skipping school when he was 10.

“I would show up in the morning and leave through a window or an unlocked door by the end of the second or third class of the day.

“I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t smart like the others. By the time I was 11, I barely showed up at all. I’d go for the first couple of days of the month and then I’d just stop going altogether,” he said.

At first Mark would spend his days helping out at home, running errands or doing odd jobs.

However, it was not long before he decided to “grow up” and started working for his older cousin, who had set up a plastering business for construction companies.

Rather than the school playing field, Mark would spend his time on building sites.

Having swapped his desk for a bucket and spade and his schoolmates for construction workers 30 years his senior, Mark may still look like a boy, but he thinks and sounds very much like a man.

“Don’t you know how a construction site works? I would mix the dust and do other odd jobs like everyone else in the construction business.

“It paid and I was doing something worthwhile, not just wasting my time in school getting into trouble. I used to think you have to do something to get ahead,” he said, winking at the mention of earning a wage.

That was four years ago. Now he is one of 200 habitually truant fifth formers taking part in the government’s new Alternative Learning Programme.

The project, set up last year by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, builds on previous programmes which targeted severe truants and children with problem behaviour.

It blends the standard curriculum with vocational courses – such as the welding class Mark attends – and has done away with the expectation of homework and the stresses of O levels.

Manuel Fenech, who heads the Paola centre Mark attends, told this newspaper that though it had a few predecessors, the new programme was unlike any before.

They have probably been punished and they have nearly all rebelled

The school, a decommissioned State primary school, caters for 165 fifth form dropouts.

There are no uniforms and no dress code. The students are not chastised for colourful hair bands, rebellious facial piercings or even tattoos.

About 20 of the children have already had a run-in with the law and some are regularly visited at school by probation officers. Some are enrolled in drug rehabilitation programmes and many are being helped to come to terms with troubled family backgrounds or traumatic childhood experiences.

These are the type of students teachers never forget, Mr Fenech said. They are the ones who tend to sit the back of classrooms, throwing paper planes and blowing raspberries, later graduating to damaging school property, bullying and worse.

“These children may have been told not to sit next to the smarter children, not to distract them. They have probably been punished and they have nearly all rebelled. We have had to change the way we deal with them. Punishing them was pushing them away, so we went back to the drawing board,” Mr Fenech said.

Instead of sending letters to parents or forcing them to spend hours writing lines after school in a detention hall, the programme piles more responsibility on students who break the rules – a philosophy Mr Fenech insists is bearing fruit.

The school’s controversial practices have, however, raised eyebrows in the local teaching community. Last month Parliament discussed the methods used at the school after news emerged that students had been permitted to smoke on the school grounds.

“Yes, we have students who had been smoking for several years before they joined us. So, we allow them to smoke on the condition they join a programme to quit, which we administer at the school through a State agency,” Mr Fenech said.

In his view, the programme’s success is best illustrated by the number of students who would otherwise not have even finished mandatory schooling.

*The child’s name has been changed to protect his identity.