There has been no change in the University’s policy regarding the language to be used in assessment, the university said in a statement.

Referring to a statement by the University Film Club criticising the university decision to prohibit the use of Maltese in examinations as from June, the university said that its long standing practice regarding languages that may be used by students in their assessments and examinations was put in writing in a legal notice in October.

As stated in the uiversity regulations, the language of assessment was English, except that for areas of study involving a language or when the senate approved the delivery of a study-unit in Maltese or in any other language.

In line with this, the senate had agreed that for the assessment of two units directly related to the Maltese language and its literaturein a master's course offered by the Institute of Maltese Studies, questions would be drawn up in both Maltese and English and students would be given the choice of answering in either language with the proviso that all questions in an examination paper should be answered in the same language.

The university said that over the years, the senate has insisted on the policy of English being the language of assessement for all courses, other than those involving the study of languages. These included the fact that English was the preferred medium of dissemination of high level learning the world over.

Another key consideration concerned the importance of benchmarking which formed a crucial tool in the assessment processes of any university that wished to keep up its standards in the world of tertiary education. This was achieved through the engagement of academics from the best universities in Europe and worldwide to act as external examiners and participate with university academic staff in marking and classifying students.

At the same time, the university appreciated the need to develop the use of Maltese, it fully supported the Maltese language and recently strengthened the Department of Maltese with an increased number of full-time academic staff. This reflected the significant number of students taking up studies in the Maltese language.