A recent study has recommended addressing the short school opening hours and the length of the summer holidays to comprehensively support families and enable them to balance paid work with family life.
The study, published on Thursday and conducted by professors Anna Borg and Liberato Camilleri, was commissioned by the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE). It explored the “perceptions and attitudes of women and men in Malta towards work-life balance, with a specific focus on family size”.
Parents in Malta face numerous challenges, particularly when their children are young, the study noted.
“For example, a marked incompatibility is observed between the typical eight-hour workday and school opening hours, which are among the shortest across the EU,” it stated. It added that the “long” summer holidays lasting just under three months exacerbate the conflict.
Additional activities create more demands and pressures, especially on mothers- National Commission for the Promotion of Equality study
The researchers highlighted that throughout the school year, many parents transport their children to extracurricular activities such as religious lessons several times a week. Aspirational middle-class families also tend to enrol their children in a variety of extracurricular activities, including sports, dance, music, drama, or private lessons.
“These additional activities create more demands and pressures, especially on mothers,” the study said.
The study offered a range of recommendations, including on work-family balance policies, leave entitlements, financial and housing support for families, and challenging gender norms to promote shared responsibilities between women and men.
Among its childcare and education recommendations, it proposed reviewing policies on early childcare and considering paid parental leave as an alternative to early formal childcare during a child’s first year. Additionally, it emphasised the need for authorities to investigate why parents are not utilising after-school services, such as Klabb 3-16, and to identify ways to enhance these offerings.
Among the 401 respondents with one child who were surveyed, 84.5% said they did not use Klabb 3-16, which offers after-school services until 6pm and operates during school holidays from 7am to 5.30pm.
Additionally, 70.1% of parents were unaware of the activities available through the programme.
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This suggests that parents are finding alternative solutions to bridge the gap between school opening hours and their workday, the study observed.
In 2011, Roger Murphy, a professor of education at the University of Nottingham, told Times of Malta that when compared with a wide range of other education systems in developed countries, students in Malta are still receiving a very low number of hours of schooling. The Malta Union of Teachers rejected this claim.