Teachers’ union and Education Ministry to blame for reforms ‘rat race’ - UPE

The Malta Union of Teachers and the Education Ministry are to blame for the large number of “student-centres” reforms which are placing a burden on educators, Union of Professionals Educators' head has said.

UPE head Graham Sansone said that the excessive reform drive had started after the MUT and Education Ministry jointly signed a sectoral agreement in 2017.

Sansone was today reacting to comments by Marco Bonnici in at interview with MaltaToday last Sunday, where the MUT president complained that school teachers were being subjected to a “rat race” of one reform after another.

“The Union of Professional Educators - Voice of The Workers, is perplexed to see stakeholders blaming a system that they initially put together themselves. It's worthwhile reminding educators who has put them in this misery,” Sansone said.

“The MUT together with its partner in crime, the Ministry for Education, had jointly signed an ‘unprecedented agreement’ - as stated by the education permanent secretary [Frank] Fabri himself back in 2017. This agreement brought with it an exorbitant amount of work for all educators, starting from kinder to secondary level,” he highlighted.

Sansone said it was “ridiculous” that survey upon survey kept indicating the obvious - that reforms were creating a problem for educators. “The lack of vision and foresight that the MUT and the ministry had, and still have, is incredible... and they are now realising that their reforms are stressing out educators.”

Underscoring that it was saddening to hear educators speak about their exhaustion and dissatisfactions at work after only a few months on the job, Sansone said that reforms like the emergent curriculum, learning outcome frameworks (LOFs), secondary education applied curriculum (SEAC), and MATSEC reforms had been introduced “without proper consultation and minimal training to educators.”

“The situation is critical, and unless these reforms are stopped or drastically controlled, the educational system is bound to fail,” the UPE head warned.

“The MUT and MEDE are the accomplices in this failure,” he said, adding that new education minister Owen Bonnici “has no choice but to prevent further dissatisfaction amongst educators, or else Malta will continue to face an apocalyptical tragedy in education.”