Waiving fines for school absenteeism is the wrong way of responding to concerns about vulnerable children being forced to attend class during the COVID-19 pandemic, NGO Repubblika has said.

The decision marks the first time since 1946 that compulsory schooling has been abolished, it noted, saying that the government’s decision to absolve itself of enforcing universal and mandatory education is “lazy, irresponsible and frankly wrong”.

Repubblika’s warning came in a statement issued on Saturday in which the NGO outlined its deep concern about Malta’s education system during the pandemic, with concerns ranging from inequalities between schools to the way in which the school curriculum was being “diluted” to filter out subjects deemed less important.

The NGO acknowledged the challenges of managing an education system during a pandemic, but said that the government also had a duty to ensure that measures introduced to prevent coronavirus infections did not end up being the reason children could not receive the education they have a right to.

Failures within the system risked creating a "lost generation" of students, it warned.

Absenteeism

Repubblika said that state and church schools are not contacting children who are not attending school “for whatever reason”.  

Education authorities had said prior to the start of the academic year that policies about school absenteeism would be amended to ensure parents and families with vulnerable household members would not be penalised due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

School reopening guidelines state that vulnerable children will be offered alternative teaching arrangements following an assessment of their own individual circumstances.

The government said this week that it expects around 600 students to be enrolled in a "virtual primary school" intended for children who could not attend class due to the pandemic. 

In its statement, Repubblika said education authorities ought to have a clear attendance record of each student and to have the capacity to contact families of children unable to attend class to provide them with classes on par to that their classmates are receiving.

“The education department should not continue to abdicate its responsibility to enforce compulsory education,” it said.

Children’s Commissioner Pauline Miceli has also warned about the risks of waiving rules making school attendance compulsory. 

Online learning

In some cases, educators have provided children with pre-recorded material to supplement their education, though this was not always suited to younger pupils or to households which lacked IT literacy or hardware, Repubblika noted.

In others, parents are spending extra money on remote private lessons to “try to fill the gaps”. But this was proving to be an added, unnecessary, expense which some families could not afford. Any such supplementary schooling should be paid for by the state, Repubblika said, given that teachers had to be compensated and church schools could not raise fees to pay educators.

In some cases, children who need to learn remotely do not have access to a laptop or educational support. Photo: AFP

In some cases, children did not have a computer at home or the ability to obtain one. In such cases, the state had a duty to step in and ensure that this did not prove a barrier to education, the NGO said.

Education inequalities

The quality of educational material on offer varied significantly between schools, Repubblika said. The risk was that inequalities between schools and students would grow even wider due to the pandemic.

Students who need a teacher’s watchful eye over them to motivate and help them thrive “are being abandoned to their fates at homes”, the NGO said. In cases where parents cannot make up for that loss, the damage risked being irreparable.

“Our discussions with teachers and education professionals warn us that these inequalities will have a devastating impact on the performance of students whose chances of succeeding are being grossly

hampered by the intermittent and unreliable quality of the education they are receiving,” the NGO warned.

Diluting the curriculum

To cope with added pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have in many cases suspended or reduced hours spent on subjects deemed less important, such as music, art and technical design, to focus on core ones.

Repubblika expressed alarm about this and said that it had also received information that in some state schools, focus on core subjects such as mathematics had also become “optional”.

COVID-19 guidelines

The NGO said that some of the guidelines for schools made little practical sense. It cited the concept of “safety bubbles” as a case in point, saying the idea fell apart when children boarded school transport.

“Educators tell us that the guidelines that do exist now are in many respects written by people with little to no understanding of life in schools,” they said.

Education Minister Owen Bonnici (left) is 'out of his depth', Repubblika said. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Children had little meaningful chance to socialise at school, with students not allowed to do any practical work and getting few chances to speak to friends and no extracurricular activities.

It acknowledged that some of these things were out of the government’s control due to the pandemic, but said authorities had squandered the chance to prepare properly during the summer,  and had not provided a national infrastructure to mitigate the problems.

Repubblika dismissed Education Minister Owen Bonnici as being “woefully out of his depth” and said it now expected the government to dig into its pockets to help schools cover the cost of equipment for remote education, pay for extracurricular activities and adequately compensate teachers and educators for the difficult work they were doing.