Teachers' union urges government to address shortage of teachers

The Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) has called on the Education Ministry to address the lack of teachers and Learning Support Assistant (LSAs), saying that calls for the latter are “long overdue.”

"The MUT finds it ridiculous that LSAs who finished the course to upgrade their qualification in order to advance from Supply to LSA 1 and from LSA 1 to LSA 2 are still awaiting the call to be issued after more than a year," they said.

The MUT alleged that the government is incorrectly guiding persons enquiring about the issue to the workers' union.

In their statement, the MUT lamented the shortage of educators, saying that the ‘deplorable’ issue is leading to stretching of the workforce.

Educators are being relieved of their respective duties, shifted around to fill vacancies of teachers and consequently creating new gaps in service, the MUT continued.

The shortage of LSAs is affecting particularly services in Resource Centres, as the reduction in personnel is leading to limitations in services provided to students.

The union has requested an urgent meeting with the Ministry for further discussions.

The MUT also criticised the Government for the recent revisions to legal notices governing the Institute for Education.

"The union finds it deplorable that this Board, and with it the institute's independence, has been eliminated at the stroke of a pen and that the Ministry can now appoint directly his own people to take decisions about the various training programmes for educators without any consultation," the union said.

Feedback from the negotiations meeting on proposals submitted to the directorates is also three weeks late, said the organisation..

Unless proper feedback is received very soon the Union will convene its council to decide the way forward, they said.