Maths and Maltese exams in government secondary schools will be held as usual, despite a directive by the Malta Union of Teachers to stop them, the Ministry of Education said on Thursday.

The MUT earlier in the week said it had directed its members not to hold the exams, in protest over a shortage of teachers which, it said, was seeing a number of teachers being required to give more lessons than provided for in the collective agreement.

The Ministry of Education said it had held two days of talks with the MUT over the Maths and Maltese teachers' 'load of 25 lessons'.

It said the exams would be held according to the timetables issued by the schools even though no agreement had been reached with the MUT. The union, it said, had rejected the latest offer made by the government.

The ministry did not say what the offer consisted of, but said it was willing to continue talks.

The MUT in a separate statement said its directive remained in force despite what it said was a desperate government attempt to 'bribe and divide' educators.

It said the talks showed that the Education Ministry did not realise what the problem was, and was trying to paper over it. 

The ministry's proposal, it said, was 'indecent.'  'degrading' and an insult

It said the ministry had offered a once-only payment of €3000 to those who had a caseload of 25, so that the directive could be withdrawn, an offer meant to divide the teachers without solving anything. 

The union said this issue was symptomatic of the wider problem of a shortage of teachers which needed to be addressed. 

The union said it had also learnt that exam papers were being prepared by people who were not involved directly in schools, as had happened for the half-yearly exams. It said it had no confidence in the process, more so since the half-year exams were a shambles.  

The union on Wednesday criticised the government for attempting to circumvent its directive, saying it was even trying to get exam papers from Church schools.

The government had retorted that only 11 of the 176 teachers of Maltese and 25 per cent of Maths teachers have 25 lessons a week.

It pointed out that the maximum class load was laid down in the sectoral agreement and that in this context only 3.5 per cent of all the middle and secondary schools had this level of workload, which showed that it was the exception rather than the rule.

 

 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.