Modern education, school hours and opportunities denied

The Malta Union of Teachers seems to have moved on from the time when it resisted change in schools and opposed the idea that technology should be used as a tool to help teachers and students. Not so long ago, for example, the MUT was against the concept of what is known as a virtual class, which enables students to keep up with their colleagues when they are confined at home because they are ill.

A few days ago, the MUT signed a memorandum of understanding with the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education and the Directorate for Educational Services. The accord, which is to be revised every year to be updated with new technological developments, provides for an eLearning platform that offers a new pedagogic mechanism to facilitate learning.

It is clear that the new MUT leadership sees the benefits of the technological advancements being registered in the teaching profession, improvements that were introduced abroad years ago but which found the old union leadership not ready to accept that times have changed and that new ways of teaching would be advantageous to both teachers and students, as well as parents.

It was a pity that teaching in Malta remained rather backward because of this intransigence. Other professions had kept themselves up-to-date with all the new possibilities that were invented, while teachers were held back by their own union from taking up and implementing the new initiatives that became available.

Thankfully, today the MUT has changed its position and looks favourably on such methods, and the agreement reached some days ago will hopefully be the first of many that the union will deem fit to sign with the education authorities in a bid to keep the teaching profession open to new, better, upto-date and modern systems.

We all know the emphasis that is being placed on education by the current administration. Opportunities for education abound, both for the younger generations as well as the older ones, although inexplicably there are some people who were unfortunate to have been teenagers during the Labour administration between 1981 and 1987 – when the education system was at its lowest point – and still find brick walls today when they seek to make up for that lost time.

It is quite strange that whereas these people are accepted by foreign universities, the local university refuses them entry. The pity is that courses offered by foreign universities cost more than those at Tal-Qroqq, and not everyone can afford them. The University of Malta should be more accommodating, especially with people who show enthusiasm and, why not, courage to improve their theoretical skills in their middle age. On occasions, the university does not even bother to reply to queries as to why a student has been excluded, and this makes it even more disappointing.

Still, generally speaking, the education sector – taking into consideration the growing university and MCAST and the investment being made in the secondary and primary tiers of our system – has made great strides forward in recent years. Efforts to encourage students to pursue their studies beyond the obligatory schooling age have achieved the desired result, with 83 per cent now choosing to remain at school after the age of 16.

There is, however, one important aspect on which the MUT will not budge – and this is the number of school days and the number of school hours per day. In this, it has the support of the government, which only last week reiterated its stance against increasing school hours and reducing holidays. The Labour Party, in this respect, seems to be more open to suggestions as its Labour spokesman, Evarist Bartolo, told this newspaper last year that perhaps the time is ripe to reconsider changing school hours. But, still, the PL has not been heard commenting on this issue since then and it is unlikely that it will bring up the subject again at this time, knowing that it lost the last election partly because it wanted to introduce a reception class before primary schooling, which was dubbed the “repeater class” by the Nationalist Party.

The idea that is being put forward for extending school hours, particularly by the Malta Employers’ Association, would not involve the teaching profession. What is being proposed is that the schooling system that exists today continues to end at 2.30pm, but students are kept at school beyond that time under the responsibility of other people – perhaps to do extra-curricular activities such as drama, music, art or sport, for which there is little or no time during normal school hours, or for them to do their homework and study.

The government’s answer to this is that there are child care centres and the 3-16 club that caters for such exigencies but although these ideas are working, they are not enough to resolve the problem of children returning home in the early afternoon. It is a known fact that many women today choose not to work, or to only work parttime, because they want to be at home when their children return from school at 3pm or thereabouts.

In a way, it is rather contradictory for the government to say that it wants to encourage more women to work – and the incentives for them to do so have not been few – but then insists that school hours should not change. The school hours we have today are the biggest obstacle there is to women doing a full-time job.

On another note related to education, this week we had the Labour Party meeting with Church school authorities, during which leader Joseph Muscat said the party was committed to seeing Church schools develop and fulfilling their “fundamental role”.

It seems that gone are the days when the Labour Party wanted to close down these schools. Still, nobody can forget what happened nearly 30 years ago. Labour’s battle-cry “jew b’xejn, jew xejn” (“either free of charge or nothing”) still rings in the ears of those who, as students, were pelted with stones to and from their school or who had to attend classes in private homes while the dispute raged on.

scalleja@independent.com.mt