Reflections on a unique education system

It is unique because nowhere in Europe do teachers have as much holidays as they do in Malta. Even Minister Bartolo admitted this lately. For example, in every EU country the academic year starts in the first week of September. Did you know that a local teacher, even if he/she does not avail herself from sick leave and emergency leave, does not go to school for more than 170 days a year? (Sometimes it is as low as 165 – I know this because every last day of school I receive a report saying how many days my child attended school). Reduce another 20 days to compensate for the 30hour a week they work: it ends up to only five months a year! Incredible – yet they always complain!

Please reflect… Did we ever have a brain drain in the education sector as we have with doctors? Did you ever see billboards advertising the teaching career as with nurses? It’s true that some, I repeat some (not all, and this definitely excludes LSAs) have certain preparatory work to do at home; suggestion – increase school day by one hour so that children have more quality time for sports thus combating childhood obesity, and during that time teachers will do their necessary preparatory work and corrections. No one is telling them to take work home.

Educators want to copy the Finnish Model but most probably would only want to take what is good for them. What will parents benefit from for example, the idea of no homework? Will this mean that parents would have to spend even longer hours with their children or send them for private lessons? Imagine if there was no private tuition in Malta: what much higher levels of illiteracy we would have.

Academics from the Faculty of Education acknowledge the ‘phenomenon of private tuition’ but has it ever crossed your mind why this phenomenon was never seriously investigated through a scientific survey involving a representative sample of parents? The reason is obvious: they fear that the results of such a survey could cast a shadow that teachers are not productive enough.

Unlike the 12 per cent shortage of nurses, with teachers it is only around one per cent (Minister Bartolo stated: 44 teachers from around 6,000). And shortage does not necessarily mean resignations. You could have a shortage of teachers due to more foreign students, more classes and new subjects being introduced. Moreover, teachers want smaller and smaller classes than before.

They complain that they have preparatory work (corrections, etc) to do at home. If my boss had to tell me: listen Joe, I am going to employ you on 30 hours a week with the same salary but the paper work that you do not finish at work has to be completed at home. Do you think I would complain? Of course not, but teachers who always get their way, still have the guts to complain that they have work to do at home, when the majority do other work as we all know.

Even with part-time vis-à-vis educators, we have an anomaly. My wife is currently working on reduced hours to take care of our child. In order to work a 30-hour week, the government bound my wife with a contract that she cannot work part time or overtime. So far agreed, but the Public Service Management Code (PSMC) policy does not apply to educators. Although teachers (and even LSAs) justify their 30-hour week because of preparatory work, no one dares tell them that according to the PSMC they should not work part time or overtime. These are all inequalities.

New schools, modernisation of schools and free tablets are good initiatives but as a parent, I prefer to see teachers being more productive so that I would not have to take my child for evening private lessons even from the tender age of 5.

Why do you think that Malta’s rate of working mothers is still low? Again, due to the privileges only teachers enjoy. The system of free summer childcare does not incentivise enough mothers to go out to work, unless of course, they have their parents ( in-nanniet) still energetic to take over. It is however, surely a relief for mothers who do not go out to work to stay ‘relaxed’ at home by being relieved from their children during their excessive holidays. Local teachers and LSAs have the longest holidays in Europe, they work less than 40 hours a week and yet work part-time in summer childcare centres, but this is not enough. Even during their part time (to which, according to the PSMC, they are not entitled), they want to enjoy fabulous conditions of work! These include starting late in July (when most schools finish by 28 June), no work in the week of the Feast of St Mary, they finish in mid-September and yet are entitled to a couple of days paid vacation leave. What does this all boil down to? If a working mother who has a child attending a Church or Private school, especially a single mother, had to use all her leave to fill the gaps that the free childcare system does not to provide for (remember that most schools have 12 weeks of summer holidays and not just eight weeks). This means she would have no leave left for the Easter and Christmas periods, for midterm holidays, for Carnival, for parents’ days, staff developing days and all the spontaneous holidays that emerge from time to time, and for herself! Poor mother…

Successive governments and ministers always gave teachers practically what they wanted at the expense of society. What are parents and mothers (wishing to work again) getting in return?

Charles Micallef