PL reveals education budget cuts, Church schools allocation cut by €1m

Addressing a press conference at the Labour Party's headquarters, Labour's spokespersons Evarist Bartolo and Owen Bonnici gave a detailed account of how entities and programmes and initiatives within the education sector will be affected as a result of January's budgetary revision.

Bartolo said the figures came directly from the Finance Ministry and challenged Finance Minister Tonio Fenech to reveal a detailed account of the cuts if he is to deny the figures.

According to the figures seen by the PL, the budget allocated for Church schools has been cut by €1,000,000, to €44.2 million; the University's budget saw a reduction of €2,483,000; MCAST's budget was cut by €770,000; while the budget for Gozo's Institute for Tourism Studies was cut down by 35% of the allocated budget.

Stipends have also been cut by €100,000, although Bonnici said it has yet to be seen how the stipends cut will occur.

"After government tried to belie the Opposition when it said that programmes and initiatives in the education sector will not be affected, now it transpires that out of the €40 million budget cuts, at least €7.6 million were to be in education," Bartolo said.

Bartolo added that these cuts were happening, even though "money for receptions, consultants, salaries and allowances for fat cats and propaganda still flows freely."

The shadow minister for the education said that in January, the finance minister had written to the ministers asking them indicate the individual line items from where the cuts were to be made and insisted that no ministry or government entity could exceed the reviewed budget.

"In February, Fenech said that there will be no cuts in education, and that government was going to wait until June 2012 to implement the €40 million cut. He said, the cuts would only go ahead if targets to reduce the deficit by the middle of the year are not reached. He insisted that health, education and other essential services will not be touched," Bartolo said.

"But a month earlier he had written to the ministers ordering them to cut their budget with immediate effect."

He added that this was proven by an email sent to coordinators and tutors working within the Foundation for Educational Services (FES) in which they were informed that the budget has been reduced by 5%.

"This means that the literacy programme - which helps children acquire basic literacy skills in Maltese and English - has to shrink by 33% to remain within the newly reduced budget," Bartolo said, adding that the contact time with the children has been reduced by 15 minutes.

"Other programmes in education are already being cut and the most vulnerable persons in society are the worst hit: the disabled, those who live in poverty, families and persons passing through difficult times and children and teenagers facing educational failure," Bartolo said.

Repeatedly describing the cuts in the line items as "obscene", Bartolo said government has cut other programmes designed to help the most vulnerable children: Special Education Programme for Disabled (-2%), Implementation of Reform Programme in Education (-13%), Literacy Initiatives (-4%), Education Initiatives (-14%), Child Care Centre (-4%), Learning Support Assistants in Private Schools (-13%), Afternoon School Programme (-30%), Let me Learn Project (-14%), Specific Learning Difficulty Unit for children with dyslexia (-14%), Development of Science Cetre (-71%).

Bartolo added that in the health sector, other cuts hitting children who are already at risk of poverty include: Primary Health Care (-33%), Strategy on Obesity (-10%) and Sexual Health Policy (-10%).

Other cuts in social welfare affecting children include: Fejda/St Jeanne Antide Programmes (-13%), Appogg (-5%) and Children and Young Persons Advisory Board (-5%).