Dolores Cristina pledges ‘repatriation’ of unruly English language students

"These should not be tolerated and if the need arises, they should be repatriated if they violate Maltese legislation,” she insisted this morning while visiting the EC English Language School.

She called on “both the EFL language schools themselves as well as the authorities” to curb unruly students’ behaviour. Cristina proposed that before language students arrived in Malta, they should be informed about “what is expected from them to do while they are in Malta.

“In this respect, both the schools which are going to accept the students as well as Maltese embassies from where these students hailed,” she explained.

Cristina appealed for all “unruly students” to be controlled. At the same time, she claimed that this behaviour “should not give a bad name to those schools, which are offering a quality service and contributing to the Maltese economy”.

EFL Monitoring Board chairman James Calleja, which supervises the licensing of language schools, announced that the board was now demanding “higher standards” from these schools. He revealed that last year, 14 EFL schools had their operating licence not renewed because they did not reach the required standards expected of them.

During her visit to EC school, Cristina explained how the EFL language school industry was contributing to the Maltese economy as it attracted more than 6% of all tourists which visited Malta each year. Currently there were 36 registered EFL schools in Malta, which employed a total of 1,252 teachers, some on a part-time basis. Last year, a total of 69,000 foreign students visited Malta to learn English as a foreign language.

A majority of these students were teenagers aged 16 to 17 years, however there were also adults and other professionals who came to Malta to learn English as a foreign language in 2009. European students amounted to 72.4% of all EFL students in Malta last year, mostly from Italy, Germany, Spain, France and Russia.

According to Cristina, last year there were also increases from other non-EU countries, such as the United States and China. EFL students spent an average of 18 days in summer and 24 days in winter.