Staff lay-offs will become inevitable in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry, and schools may even have to shut down if student arrivals continue to drop, the Federation of English Language Teaching Organisations in Malta has warned.
Almost 57 per cent of the 23 ELT schools that took part in Feltom's industry survey for the first quarter of this year reported a drop in student arrivals compared with the same period last year. Only 21.7 per cent reported an increase.
Overall, the industry experienced a decrease in the number of weeks booked by students from several major year-round markets, including Germany, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, South Korea, Austria, Japan and Poland.
"Schools faced with a substantial fall in student numbers will find it difficult to operate in the long term. Should the crisis escalate or be prolonged then the possibility of school closures becomes very real," Feltom executive officer Isabelle Pace Warrington said.
The ELT industry was booming until the global financial crisis made headlines in 2008.
National Statistics Office figures show that the ELT industry registered growth of 28 per cent in 2007 over the previous year, with over 86,500 students coming to Malta. Feltom expects 2008's results to show similar gains when they are released, but with a decline in the final quarter.
The global recession is an obvious factor behind the decrease in students, with 77 per cent of schools citing this as a predominant cause. The Maltese ELT industry has also suffered from the decline of the British pound which has made UK ELT schools more financially appealing.
In addition, nearly 55 per cent of respondents to the recent survey expressed concern that problems relating to the issuing of visas abroad have negatively impacted on certain markets and prevented the growth of others.
Malta has consular co-operation agreements with Austria, Italy and Spain, meaning anyone requiring a visa to enter Malta can apply at participating consulates from these countries. However, Ms Pace Warrington said that because this system was voluntary, there was little incentive for staff at these offices to help anyone applying for a visa to enter Malta.
"It has frequently been reported that applicants are turned away because either staff are too busy or unaware of the existence of representation agreements," she said.
A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted that visa procedures exercised at all EU diplomatic missions and consular posts on behalf of Malta were consistent with that country's own procedures.
Feltom also complained that the distances some students are expected to travel for visas are "unprecedented".
Malta relies heavily on agencies to recruit ELT students and Feltom believes that many of these have lost faith in the visa process and are taking their business elsewhere.
"Agents have given up investing time and money to get visas for students to come to Malta when with the same effort they can be sending eight or 10 students to the UK," Ms Pace Warrington said.
Despite Feltom's wish to broaden their markets, the Malta Tourism Authority cautioned against putting too much emphasis on attracting students from new areas.
"In the current economic scenario, it is imperative for us to concentrate on core ELT markets rather than spread our resources too thinly in several potential new markets outside Europe, where the marketing learning curve is long and requires a relatively longer period of time before becoming effective," MTA communications director Kevin Drake said.