Master plan for state schools

Maintenance works were this summer being carried out in 800 classrooms in 40 schools at a cost of around Lm250,000, Education Minister Louis Galea said yesterday.

Dr Galea yesterday visited schools at Hamrun, including the Dun Gorg Preca and Salvino Spiteri primary schools, and the Maria Tereza Nuzzo secondary school.

Maintenance works are being carried out by the Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools which started implementing its programme as soon as the summer holidays began.

Once works were concluded, a surface area of some 300,000 square metres would have been painted. Work, the minister said, had already started on around 15 schools.

He said that the FTS had to ensure that the work was of the highest quality. It should not accept mediocrity and there were already cases where work was shoddy and in such instances the foundation took immediate action.

The minister said that improving the school environment was part of the reform which was taking place in the country's educational system.

The ministry is currently preparing a number of reports on reform programmes in the several sectors of the country's education system.

These reports, he said, would serve as the basis of a discussion process between educators, parents, students and all those who were interested in improving the quality of the Maltese educational system.

Among the sectors being analysed critically was the system and management of the education process of children aged between three and 16 years old and the organisation of primary and secondary schools with special emphasis on secondary schools.

Dr Galea said the foundation, which had been working on schools for a little over two years, was already planning, designing and building tomorrow's schools.

It was also preparing a report on all schools so that it would have a master plan of the work it had to carry out by 2010.

This master plan would be based on the audit carried out on each school by architects and engineers. It would be based on an analysis of the needs and expected developments in the community of each school and every locality with its particular situation.

Following the audit on the Adelaide Cini School of Hamrun, it was established that two blocks of this school had structural problems. The ministry said that because of structural works being carried out, students from this school were to start attending the Maria Assunta school next door in the next scholastic year.

The necessary work was currently being done at Maria Assunta for this school to be able to take the additional student load.

The ministry said that Adelaide Cini's good block would continue being used by fifth formers of both schools.