The federation representing English language schools is lobbying for a higher share of the Malta Tourism Authority’s marketing spend, arguing that the main schools spend up to 10 times as much as the authority.

Feltom estimates that its sector only gets around €50,000 to €60,000 of the MTA’s €4 million marketing budget for 2014. This jars with the economic impact of the sector, which brought in €64 million in 2013 in direct revenue – and almost twice that when indirect spending is taken into account. This represents nearly a tenth of the whole tourism sector revenue, and 13 per cent of all bednights.

Malta currently hosts 1.5 per cent of the global English-language teaching market – and Feltom believes that it would be easy to boost this to 2 per cent.

“We have managed to achieve a very high level of recognition out there, and our academic standards are very well respected,” CEO Genevieve Abela said.

The English Monitoring Board is very active in maintaining academic standards, doing random visits and checks to ensure schools and teachers are in line with the requirements. There are currently 4,500 people with teachers’ warrants but the National Statistics Office reported that only 1,469 were employed in 2013 – most of them on a part-time basis.

Feltom estimates that its sector only gets around €50,000 to €60,000 of the MTA’s €4 million marketing budget for 2014

Ms Abela joined Feltom as CEO in May 2012, the first for the organisation. This changed the momentum dramatically. Apart from the obvious advantage of being there as a full-time employee, her neutral position causes far fewer ripples for the schools, as until now school representatives attended meetings on behalf of Feltom with authorities, the government and so on, which inevitably opened the possibility of conflict of interest and made the other schools wary of sharing information.

Public perception of the sector has not kept up with reality. English-language teaching is no longer about hordes of teenagers staying with host families in a six-week period between the end of July and August .

The 43 schools in Malta now have both full-time and part-time staff on their books – rather than relying on casual summer workers, usually students during their academic break. Host families, always in short supply – particularly hospitable ones with a good command of English – are now supplemented by student residences and hotels.

The season has now spread across most months of the year, thanks to a concerted effort by the schools to attract students from the southern hemisphere and Asia – in fact Feltom is planning a trade mission to

China by year end – as well as mature students not tied to a school year.

“The teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) started in the 1960s and the 1970s aimed at students who wanted to study at University. It was only some time later than Malta became so popular with the junior market. But now the emphasis is being put on mature students, who want to hone their business English, for example.

“Now we are refining that approach even more and going for very niche sectors, such as aviation and maritime, technical and engineering, and legal and medical English,” she explained.

Membership of Feltom is voluntary – the 20 schools that signed up represent 85 per cent of all the incoming students – but accreditation is giving considerable weighting by agents. The organisation is currently reviewing the 2004 accreditation scheme and will put forward a new version by next year.

Malta is also one of the few countries with legislation to cover EFL. The legislation is currently being reviewed by the EFL Monitoring Board. The last review of the legal notice was in 1996 and is in dire need of updating to cover changes ranging from home tuition to online tuition.

At a glance: the EFL sector

Average length of stay was up by 12.8% to 21.8 days, compared with 8.1 for leisure and business tourists.

Student weeks were up 3.3% in 2013. However, since stays are longer, the actual spend goes down and revenue was down 3.5%.

Students spend an average of €274.4 per week, with 52 per cent going towards tuition, 38 per cent to ­accommodation, and 10 per cent to activities and other ­categories.

Since staff costs went up, the sector’s gross operating profit was down 26 per cent to €32.7 per studentweek from €45.5 a year before.

The 0-17 age group accounts for only a quarter of student weeks. Over a third are now aged over 26.

Russia has the largest market share of student weeks – 15% – with Italy in second place (10%) and Germany in third (9%).

Brazil saw an 84% increase between 2012 and 2013, even though it only has a 3% market share at present.

The Japanese and South Koreans spend an average of 56.5 weeks here, followed by Turks (53 weeks) and Brazilians (46.2 weeks).