Five years after the government promised a tracking device system for all school transport, the education ministry has scrapped the plans, saying testing showed “there were better options”.

Instead, it is providing onboard supervision to ensure children get on and off the school bus – but this service has only been extended to pupils attending state school. 

The news comes less than a year after the education ministry awarded a €118,800 direct order to private company Handson Systems Ltd to set up a “fobs tracking solution”. 

The issue of monitoring children dates to 2018, when the government promised free transport and supervision for students attending state, Church and independent schools. 

While transport was eventually provided for free to all students, plans for the service to be supervised were dropped. Instead, the government said it was opting for an app-based monitoring system. 

Five years on, an education ministry spokesperson told Times of Malta that following some testing it transpired “there were better options” to an app-based monitoring system. In the absence of this app-based monitoring system, the government therefore funded onboard supervision, but only for state school children. 

Onboard supervision only for state primary schools

The spokesperson was replying to questions by Times of Malta about whether the government was planning on extending free supervision to Church and independent schools.

The spokesperson hailed the free transport scheme, “introduced by the Labour government”, a “success”, adding that 33,690 students were using the service during the current scholastic year. 

Onboard supervision is offered on all routes servicing state primary schools, the spokesperson confirmed. 

“As part of the scheme, the ministry pilot tested the app-based monitoring system to track students. The test was conducted three times and was followed up daily. A technical report for the testing period indicated there were better options. 

“Therefore, the introduction of transport supervision on all state school transport servicing primary schools was introduced. A system is in place where all buses servicing state free school transport, are tracked on a live operational panel using the current infrastructure.”

The questions were first sent to the education ministry on February 6, with the spokesperson sending replies on March 28. Follow-up questions remained unanswered.