Police called in 12 times over four years on reports of student violence at Pembroke secondary school

St Claire’s College in Pembroke tops the list of schools where police were called in to investigate cases of violence between students, information tabled in parliament shows.

The statistics tabled by Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri in response to a question by Opposition MP Graziella Galea, covered the four-year period between 2022 and 2025.

St Claire’s College in Pembroke, which houses a middle and secondary school, recorded 12 such cases where police had to intervene after reports of fighting between students.

The same school was the site of a horrific incident last year when a 14-year-old student stabbed another 14-year-old boy several times. The victim was in danger of dying but later recovered. The aggressor was subsequently charged in court with stabbing a school peer and keeping an explosive substance. Police testimony revealed that the aggressor had “a Molotov-like substance” in his schoolbag. He pleaded not guilty and his defence claimed that he had been subjected to “years” of bullying.

The case is ongoing but several parents who had spoken to MaltaToday at the time, voiced their concern that this was not a one-off incident in the school. The statistics tabled in parliament give credence to those concerns.

Indeed, St Claire’s College in Pembroke saw police intervening in cases involving students every year between 2022 and 2025. There were four cases in 2022, three in 2023, one case in 2024 and four in 2025.

Two other secondary colleges had to deal with police reports every single year in that period—St Benedict’s College middle and secondary school in Kirkop and Mosta’s Marija Regina College secondary school in Żokrija. In total, St Benedict’s College recorded eight cases of student-on-student violence that required police intervention, while the Mosta school registered six such cases, placing second and third respectively.

Overall, during the period there were 50 cases which required police intervention across Malta’s schools. All cases concerned middle and secondary schools, apart from one that happened at the post-secondary MCAST campus in Gozo.

The statistics show that 44 cases happened in state schools, four cases happened in church schools—the Archbishop’s Seminary in Rabat, the Bishop’s Conservatory in Victoria and De La Salle College in Birgu—and one case in an independent school, the Verdala International School in Pembroke.

No further details were given as to the nationalities of the students involved in these cases or whether all cases ended up in court.

Source: PQ/Home Affairs Ministry