Church schools employees are campaigning for the right to have their children attend the same school where they work without having to go through a ballot.

In a petition sent to the Curia, they asked that their children were kept in mind when deciding upon revised entry requirements recently proposed by the public schools association.

The report was drawn up following the government’s proposed reform for the smooth transition of students from primary to secondary schools, which will also affect Church schools.

The reform seeks to abolish over-riding importance of the Junior Lyceum and common entrance exams, replacing them with a system of continuous assessments.

As it stands, employees’ children are only enlisted if their name is drawn; the same system that applies to other applicants who either do not have special needs, live in a residential home or whose siblings are already attending that school.

“We would like this to be revised for several reasons but mostly because we believe family values are over and above anything else for us all,” they said in their petition.

The staff argue that, through such an arrangement, their children would be able to go home after school with one of the parents instead of having to stay alone, go to a relative or a care centre.

Secondly, they said, both the parent and the child would consider the schools to be their second home, where they could work and be motivated.

Finally, they said the Church would be giving a clear message on how employers could implement a practice that benefitted the family.

“In fact, employees having the right for their children to be enlisted where they work is nothing new because it is already practised in state schools,” they said.

The staff said the schools where they worked had become a part of their lives and families for many of them. “Many of us have benefitted from the Catholic education system since we were students ourselves. Today, as teachers, we are preaching what we learnt from the clergy who taught us in the past,” they said.

While confirming that a petition was presented to the Episcopal Conference, a Curia spokesman said the matter still had to be discussed.

More than 3,000 entry applications were submitted to the Curia last year for just over 1,000 vacancies in Church schools.

kbugeja@timesofmalta.com

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