Nine independent schools are owed hundreds of thousands of euros after the government failed to honour an agreement to cover the salaries of learning support assistants in recent months.

The schools are paying the money themselves. In some cases, the last payment was made in January and since then a bill of some €600,000 has accumulated, sources told Times of Malta.

The amounts due to these schools, which between them employ 136 LSAs, vary significantly, but if the situation persists some of them will find it tough to make ends meet.

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Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education said today that reimbursements to independent schools to cover LSAs' salaries are paid on receipt of invoices by the respective schools and once the necessary internal verifications are made. To this effect, the ministry is processing such claims and issuing related payments.

The delays were compounded by invoices which were submitted very late by a number of schools, leading to a derailment in the financial process of this procedure.

"However the Ministry would like to assure everyone that this ongoing process is moving forward and payments are being issued to honour commitments," it said.

With regard to a parliamentary question, answered yesterday, about nearly €5m due by the government to Church Schools, the ministry said that since the Parliamentary reply was formulated, it has issued payments which cover all expenses for 2014, adding up to more than half of any pending claims.

In a reaction, the Nationalist Party said Education Minister Evarist Bartolo was, yet again, blaming somebody else for issues in his ministry, this time the private schools.

It was a shame, the PN said, that the schools had been left without the funds they needed. Mr Bartolo should shoulder his responsibilities, not blame somebody else and the funds should be given tot he schools as soon as possible.