Installing more mobile classrooms to cope with the influx of students, mostly migrants, at St Paul’s Bay government primary school was no solution, according to Maria Regina College principal Patrick Decelis.
“There is no place for more mobile classrooms at our school as we are full up. We have no intention of putting more children in mobile classrooms and, if the new school is not ready by this September, we will have to find another solution,” Mr Decelis told Times of Malta.
The college he heads incorporates 12 schools, including the one at St Paul’s Bay.
The newspaper reported earlier the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools issued a call for tenders to install new mobile homes that would serve as classrooms at St Paul’s Bay primary and Żejtun’s secondary.
Mr Decelis declared publicly on Thursday there would be no more mobile classrooms at his school. When contacted and told about the call for tenders, he stuck to his stand.
If the school misses its deadline, we have to find other solutions
“Originally, we were thinking of having extra mobile classrooms for the February intake. However, this is no longer necessary,” he said.
Asked whether the call for a new tender indicated that a new school, promised for 2015, would again miss the deadline come September, Mr Decelis insisted that “mobile classrooms will not be the solution”.
“While I hope the new school will be available this September, mobile classrooms will not be an alternative. If the school misses its deadline, we have to find other solutions, possibly the transfer of children from our area to other schools,” he said.
Mr Decelis was optimistic that the new school, located in Qawra, will be ready by September. However, it is evident the new building is far from completion.
A number of mobile classrooms already exist at the 1956 St Paul’s Bay school. Installed about three years ago, they host tens of primary students in a locality with a bursting population. Over the past three years, the locality’s population grew by 26 per cent, mostly through immigration, becoming the island’s largest town.
Education Minister Evarist Bartolo had promised a new school in the locality would open in 2015. However, problems at the FTS, including the resignation of top officials, corruption claims and delays in the tendering process, led to delays, with the latest target date being September 2019.
Asked to give more details on the placing of mobile classrooms in St Paul’s Bay and Żejtun schools, both the Education Ministry and the FTS did not reply by the time of writing.
Some parents whose children were accommodated in mobile school rooms said the temporary classrooms were comfortable but others complained they were inadequate, cold and very claustrophobic.
Teachers who spoke to the newspaper commented that, in this day and age, such classrooms were not ideal for educating children. “We should have never arrived at this pitiful situation,” a seasoned educator told this newspaper. “It shows our systems are failing,” she added.