The St Edward’s international boarding school in Vittoriosa was inaugurated by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi this morning.

The boarding school, which has 40 places, is the only one in Malta and takes in boys aged between 13 and 18 and girls aged between 16 and 18. The boarding house is targeted at an international audience.

The school used to accept boarders until the early 1990s.

School bursar Sandro Bruno said the school’s administration had done its homework well and it found there were people who wanted to send their children to a boarding school, such as expatriates who worked in Libya and who might be unwilling to send their children to Libyan schools.

John Portelli, the chairman of the board of governors, told timesofmalta.com that although it was not very common for people to send their children to a boarding school permanently in this day and age, there were situations where parents might need to be away from the country for a period of time. The school could handle such situations.

Students could also board at the school for a short period of intense study.

The main market was the international market and the school was offering the International Baccalaureate (IB), an alternative to the A level system which was increasingly being recognised by major universities abroad.

Dr Gonzi, whose two sons used to be students at the college, said the school had an important role to play in the country as many of its former students were now in influential positions.

It was an institution that had accompanied Malta’s history, he said.

The Prime Minister said that education was one of the main assets of the country, since Malta’s main resource was human.

He expressed satisfaction that the Maltese students who were being funded to go abroad to do their Ph D and Masters were obtaining excellent results..

Dr Gonzi said that St Edward’s aim of attracting international students fitted in with the government’s 2015 vision.