The government is increasing the number of mobile classrooms for its schools to address localised increases in student populations. On the one hand, there is nothing particularly disconcerting about students using mobile classrooms; more than one independent school in Malta use them due to particular situations, without undue fuss from the respective school community.

The quality of teaching and learning in such spaces should not automatically suffer simply because mobile classrooms are used. If anything, such classrooms tend to have appropriate lighting and internal space, which cannot be said for all permanent classrooms in Maltese schools.

So why have these mobile classrooms caused such dismay? The government may be tempted to brush it off as the usual negativity of its naysayers. Indeed, this is its go-to reaction to practically any criticism it receives.

This was yet again in evidence with respect to the recent Central Link and Santa Luċija underpass protests. But the opposition to these projects is now wider than the projects themselves. They have become a lightening rod for increasing discontent with this government’s short-sighted transport policies and their disastrous environmental impact. 

In the same way, the mobile classrooms are symptomatic of a greater malaise: this government’s seeming inability to undertake proper strategic educational planning. The mobile classrooms in St Paul’s Bay primary school are needed, we are told, because the new primary school in Qawra is not yet ready, having suffered its fourth consecutive delay over two years to its opening date.

But this delay is mostly due to the mismanagement within the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, still under the cloud of corruption allegations levelled by its own CEO.

In any case, why did the government opt for mobile classrooms in the Rabat primary school and the Mrieħel secondary school rather than build new classes? Will this added space not be needed in the near future? What are government’s medium- and long-term plans here?

Another example of mismanagement is the delay in opening the sorely needed new primary school in Victoria. We are told that the latest delays are due to recent archaeological findings, which is wholly appropriate.

But the real reason for the long-term delay is that the site of the new school was changed repeatedly since it was first planned prior to 2013, as different ministers for education and for Gozo played power games.

There are serious doubts about the government’s capacity for strategic planning in education even beyond infrastructural issues. For example, the minister had long been questioned, even by this paper, about his assurances on the soundness and preparedness of the My Journey educational reform of state secondary education.

We now learn that the ‘Applied’ Maths, English, Maltese and Science are not considered fit for purpose by teachers and have been largely rejected by students and parents. These four core subjects were meant to be the cornerstones of learning in the other more vocational ‘Applied’ subjects. The so-called ‘Applied’ curricular stream was the jewel in government’s My Journey reform. Less than two months before implementation it has not even officially confirmed this debacle, let alone informed the public of the way forward.

In many areas of government endeavour a pattern is emerging of stop-gap measures that replace long-term strategic planning. In education, mobile classrooms may well become the emblem for this sorry slide into governance mediocrity.