MUT petitions ministry to withdraw circular stopping teachers speaking out

Updated 2:10pm with UPE comments

The teachers’ union is petitioning the Education Ministry to withdraw a controversial circular requiring teachers to get written permission before speaking to the media and to tell their bosses what they intend to speak about in advance.

Circular DES 28.2024 was sent out by the ministry in late September and applies to educators at all levels.

The circular says that educators who obtain permission to speak to the media must ensure their comments reflect Education Ministry policies and objectives.

They must also refrain from promoting their personal opinions or making statements that might be perceived as politically biased.

Announcing the petition in a statement on Thursday, the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) said preventing teachers from speaking about their profession in public was “tantamount to censorship”.

The union said teachers had the “right and duty to speak publicly about their profession, the education system and the way education affects students.”

It invited teachers, students and the public to sign the petition. 

The announcement follows a teacher being reprimanded by her headmaster after she publicly spoke out against a new Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) system that introduced constant assessments.

Maths teacher Joanna Mallia had warned Education Minister Clifton Grima that the new system was putting immense pressure on students during a podcast on Jon Mallia’s Il-Każin fuq Tokis programme.

While Mallia defended headmaster Jonathan Portanier Mifsud, saying he was just following orders of “someone from above”, he rejected the characterisation, saying he had not been following any orders when he discussed the matter with her.

Reacting to what it said was the “first reported case where a teacher was reprimanded for speaking publicly about the profession", the MUT said Thursday that educators “cannot be stopped from expressing their professional judgement in public.”

Teachers were “duty bound to engage in dialogue  about the profession and aspects related to it,” the union said.

It said that as the country had “removed censorship of individuals in all situations,” the union would “not accept that censorship is re-introduced with educators in the education system.”

The circular attracted widespread criticism when news of its distribution broke; fellow teachers’ union, the Union of Professional Educators (UPE) told its members to ignore the directive and urged for it to be withdrawn, while civil society representatives branded it “totalitarian”.

The Opposition PN had said the circular "stifles the freedom of expression of every educator as an individual and citizen by stating that no educator may voice their personal ideas on the field of education and dictates what may be said".

'Circular violates consitutional rights'

In a statement Thursday, the UPE joined the MUT's calls to retract the circular and urged the Education Ministry to "adopt transparent safeguards aligning with Malta’s anti-censorship principles."

The union said it "condemns the silencing of educators who raise legitimate concerns about Malta’s education system," including "recent cases" linked to the circular which it said "violates constitutional free expression rights and professional ethics."

It noted that it had already asked the Ombudsman to investigate its legality and "chilling effect on educators’ voices", calling the office's intervention "critical to safeguarding professionals’ rights."

The UPE said the ministry's "ongoing silence", despite repeated requests from the union for clarity had left teachers "vulnerable to arbitrary disciplinary action for advocating reforms."

"Educators have a duty to highlight systemic flaws—from flawed assessment models to resource shortages—that directly impact students. By stifling criticism, authorities jeopardize trust in the education sector", it said.

‘Highly concerning’

In a statement, rule of law NGO Repubblika expressed its solidarity with Mallia, saying it considered the reprimand to be “serious”.

Calling the incident “highly concerning, especially when taking into account that the order for censorship came ‘from above',” Repubblika said it expected those in authority “to listen rather than silence people.”

It said it was “useless for the laws of our country to state that teachers are professionals if they require permission to speak about their own profession.”

The NGO called on Education Minister Clifton Grima to condemn the reprimand. “If he does not, we expect the Prime Minister to clarify the government's position on this censorship."