Teachers call for action on expert’s report on state school educators’ challenges

The results from a study that highlights the challenging situations that the educators are facing, has been published today.

MUT President Marco Bonnici
MUT President Marco Bonnici

Malta’s teachers’ union have called on the education ministry to take action over the state of state school educators, over a report authored by Prof. Mark Borg on the profession’s challenges.

The study, ‘Educators in the State School Sector: the challenges of an ever-demanding profession’, was launched in October 2019 by the MUT and the ministry.

At the time, MUT president Marco Bonnici had complained that teachers were being forgotten in the raft of ‘student-centred’ reforms undertaken by the government.

Teachers left breathless by reforms ‘rat race’, says union boss

The results of the study, published today, highlight the challenging situations that the educators are facing.

MUT said the results must be considered in conjunction with further studies like the one conducted in 2012 on behalf of the MUT, ‘Towards a Quality Education for All – The College System’, also by Prof. Mark Borg and Dr Joseph Giordmaina, and the 2018 ‘Teachers’ Professional Lives and Careers’, by Dr Michelle Attard Tonna and Dr James Calleja. 

“The situation that emerges is quite clear, and the MUT is passing this message to the Ministry for Education: we cannot have more shelved documents without an analysis of findings and actions to solve issues that emerge,” the MUT said.

“The MUT shall be pressing with the government to carry out this process and will be proposing the setting up of an immediate action group with representatives of the Ministry for Education, the MUT and other stakeholders to carry out an analysis of the findings and to propose solutions. The educational sector cannot afford to have more documents which are shelved.”

In 2019, Bonnici said that the education ministry’s student-centred approach, promoted for years as the way forward to ensure that all children succeed, had gone beyond the meaning of the coined catchphrase.

“The great emphasis on the rights and needs of the student all the time has led to a system that is now effectively bypassing the educator,” Bonnici told MaltaToday. The union boss even said he had experienced various instances from ministry officers and employers who are “putting on their blinkers” when it comes to the needs of educators. “The excuse is always that they are there to serve students. In doing so, however, they are disserving and side-lining educators.”