Interview • 6 October 2002

Exams, streaming, education and the 1984 strike

He is an educator and also a union man. He recalls vividly the teachers, strike in 1984. Malta Union of Teachers President John Bencini talks to Matthew Vella

The MUT building is safe. Very safe. There’s only one thing stopping people from entering and that is the reinforced steel door with four-inch bars tracing the whole frame.

Entering the MUT premises leaves me with a sense of vindicated suspicion that teachers have always been part of a grouping with bad clothes and bad hair. The gloomy foyer is colourless and spartan in design. Save of course for one particular set of photographs, featuring mainly policemen in the fascio-grey uniforms and an all too familiar air of aggro and confusion. It is the 1984 teacher’s strike.

Up on the third floor I ask a man where I could find Mr John Bencini, head of the Malta Union of Teachers. The man escorts me to his office. He is John Bencini. The embarrassing start is waived off. We get down to business.

"The steel door was placed there after the 1984 strike. A group of union thugs had just emerged from a meeting when they burst inside the building with road bollards. They caused thousands of pounds in damage. We never took any chances thereafter, although the Valletta local council asked us to change the door. Still, we don’t take any chances."

He hands me a condensed history of the MUT lock-out of September 1984. It all adds up. The steel door, the memories of the 1984 lock-out - the teaching profession tends to be fragile and vulnerable and till this day faces innumerable challenges.

At 58 years of age, John Bencini looks quite unassuming. Very teacher-like, and certainly not proffering the image of a fist-slamming bolshie. This is the academic approach to unionism, not an abattoir for proles.

In 1969 he graduated in philosophy and English from the University of Springhill, Alabama and came back to Malta to teach English. He also enrolled in the Malta Union of Teachers. But his real test came when he became a council member in the difficult 1980s.

The 1984 incident started on 19 September, when the MUT issued directives telling teachers to work to rule, in protest against government’s procrastination on a collective agreement – three and a half years in the offing with nothing finalised.

Two days later, Education Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici demanded the union sign a declaration to remove its right to issue directives. A scorned Mifsud Bonnici was handed a blank paper. In return he ordered a lock out of all government teachers who had refused to sign the declaration.

On 24 September, the Union issued strike directives. 2000 teachers complied. That was 90% of all teachers, locked out of school without pay for almost two months.

"Many of the teachers, especially those who lived in the South in towns like Zejtun or Bormla, faced violence of all sorts, even shot at through their house windows. The MUT President, Alfred Buhagiar, was threatened constantly. His brother’s shop was blasted by a bomb.

"The strike lasted for seven weeks. The solidarity between the teachers was extraordinary as we battled what I saw was a threat to the liberty of trade unionism. There were no party differences. We were united and everyone held strong. I had no worries. My family and my wife’s family supported me. There was a principle to be fought for. I was proud to be on strike!

"Of the teachers who were on strike, hardly anyone flinched. But when we were later readmitted to school, there were thousands of transfers and many students suffered when they lost their teachers."

After 1984, the MUT embarked on a campaign to give teaching a professional status. Till then teachers were not considered as professionals and the MUT called for all the benefits of professional status, such as salary increases and collective agreements.

Shedding the sombre tone recalling the austere 1980s he becomes a story-telling grandfather. "1988 was a memorable year. That was the year when government recognised the professional status of teachers within the Education Act. Teachers became professionals and could now benefit from collective agreements. That was a great day for the union."

The latest in a series of bureaucratic farces has to be the recent MTA fine, where a teacher was fined for lecturing to French exchange students at a public museum. "I first heard of the incident when the teacher concerned came to speak to us. I was shocked! I thought he was joking. The whole affair - a teacher getting fined for lecturing his students on Maltese history – was ludicrous.

"What the President of the Malta Tourist Guides said about the law also concerning government students is simply ridiculous. This person has no idea what they’re talking about. By law, MTA enforcers can fine teachers lecturing to their students out of school. You only need an invidious enforcer to be fined on the spot.

"We are now waiting on the Minister of Education to redefine the law concerning students and teachers out on cultural excursions. We want the law to be amended and clarified."

I change the subject onto the envious side of the teaching job – short hours, paid holidays and three months of summer bliss.

I expect him to sour up, but he remains calm when I tell him teachers have it easy. "I completely disagree," he drawls. "A lot of that so called "extra" time is dedicated to correcting home-works and preparing lessons which is the duty of any teacher. Sometimes they spend up to eight in the evening with their after-hours work. That is why they have short hours.

"You also have to take into consideration the stress incurred. Some students are not as rewarding and motivated as others. It gets tiresome."

As a trade unionist, John Bencini is no rabble-rouser for unionism’s sake. He is also an educator and in that perspective, the man has his own things to say about education in Malta.

I always considered myself lucky having attended a church school, though I loathed the place. We knew we were far off better than some of the public schools and there certainly was no love lost between us and them.

Indeed, learning you are different from other people comes from an early age and private and public schools are the first steps towards the great class divide. At a private and church school your uniform looks better, your hair is cropped to perfection and you wear jet-black shoes.

"I see money as being central to this problem. The reason why private and church schools are seen as better than public schools is because there is a lack of financial resources in government schools.

"Private and church schools tend to be paid a lot of money by parents. I still sustain however that there is great potential in public schools and they are as good as private schools. But in Malta, everyone wants their children to be in these schools."

Apart from money however, there are other problems which have to do with the lack of appeal government schools have. Proper decentralisation has not yet occurred although advances have been made.

"Central government still chooses its school workers and this means that support staff is not always diligent. I blame government for not advancing enough money to public schools. Area secondaries lack computers, although primary school teachers have their own laptop. Private and church schools have PTAs. In government schools, there’s a very low voter turnout when it comes to vote for the school council."

So there, I interrupt – the great cultural divide, a latent understanding between the us and them that difference and segregation is not a question of money but also of one’s attitude towards school education.

"Money is pivotal here. Children have to have a good school to be motivated and this means more financial resources. If there was a better environment and an appreciable aesthetic in public schools students would be more motivated.

"It is also a question of education. Maltese schools are designed to instruct not to educate, unfortunately. They gear a student up to work for their ‘O’-levels only and do not take into consideration what they are really good at. All these subjects like Maltese, Maths and Italian for example – what about crafts and play?

"The syllabus and the curriculum should be adapted to the child’s needs so as to motivate them. Children are locked up inside classrooms for too much. There are too little cultural excursions and this is bad in a small insular island.

"It is obvious when we see the difference in the way children talk abroad and here – in Malta children are simply instructed to do homework and exams not in developing a certain life-long character. Life-long education is the key."

So would Mr Bencini do away with exams and homework?

"The situation in Malta is totally different to that in other European countries which do not have yearly exams. The main goal should be to educate not instruct, otherwise we shall never reach out to the students. Basically we have reduced education to an exam-oriented school – to find a job you have to be the first in everything, the best at the end of the year.

"In fact, the National Minimum Curriculum said exams have to stop and instead introduces a formative and summative assessment. Teachers should start keeping books on the child’s development as they progress."

"We have to stop affecting these children’s futures. We have to reward children. In future I can say we will be having fewer examinations as teachers are currently being trained to make formative assessments."

In 1998, a new step was taken to give Maltese education a more progressive outlook and structure. It fell short of even climbing the next rung. The plan was to phase out streaming.

Some have borne the fruits of being lucky enough to clinch a church school lottery name, trundled off to the nearest monastery and been processed thoroughly with religious education and ‘O’-level standard exams to ultimately squeeze into the AB category.

Others have had to suffer the ordeal of being forced to take an exam at ten years of age to win a place at the Junior Lyceum, or having to make do with ABC and basic math at an area secondary.

The argument for comprehensives and mixed ability teaching has so far been trounced by those advocates of class streaming – the teachers who feel they cope better with equal-level students and naturally, parents, who do not want their offspring mingling with the intellectually impure.

"Three years ago, we attempted to reverse this trend", Mr Bencini says. "Our plans leaked out and they were greeted with outright negation by teachers and parents alike.

"If the MUT had to hold a referendum towards changing to a mixed ability system, it would be voted down outright. Malta’s mentality is to segregate children. This does not exist anywhere in the world. If government had to remove the exam for the Junior Lyceum, I’d say it would fall."

In 1994, Mr Bencini started teaching braille, extending his role to helping children with special needs. Two years later, he was elected as President of the MUT and since then has always been re-elected. So what next for the future of the teaching profession, Mr Bencini?

"Europe. As a union we have declared we are 100% in favour of EU accession. We see Malta in the EU, a truly democratic organisation. Only the EU can guarantee that there will be no repetitions of the 1980s. And that if ever another Maltese attempts to do what happened in the 1980s, the EU can act as a shield of democracy. The EU is a club for solidarity and democracy, as we have clearly seen in the case of Haider in Austria. I just cannot think of an island as small as Malta remaining isolated.

"My opinion is that it is better to have a voice inside than a voice outside."