Education minister Clifton Grima insisted he has no issue with teachers publicly expressing their views on specific education policies after a government school teacher said she was told off by her headmaster for doing just that.
Last month, maths teacher Joanna Mallia claimed she was reprimanded by her headmaster Jonathan Portainer Mifsud after she publicly spoke out against a new Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) system that introduced constant assessments.
Mallia had warned Education Minister Clifton Grima that the new system was putting immense pressure on students during the Q&A segment of Jon Mallia’s show Il-Każin fuq Tokis.
Speaking to Times of Malta on Wednesday, Grima said that in his time as minister, no teacher had ever been prevented from expressing their views in public or threatened for doing so after the fact.
"We encourage all educators to participate in debates on policy, and I have no problem with them expressing their views at public events as long as they are based on facts," he said.
The minister added that a new circular concerning how teachers should conduct themselves in the media was sent out on March 4.
He explained how the new circular supersedes the one sent to educators last September, which stated that all educators had to obtain permission to speak to the media, while ensuring their comments reflected education ministry policies and objectives.
It ordered teachers to refrain from promoting their personal opinions or making statements that might be perceived as politically biased.
The Malta Union of Teachers had called for this circular to be withdrawn.
The new circular - PS 08/2025 - states that to ensure clarity and simplicity, public officers should familiarise themselves with procedures outlined in three separate directives and codes regulating political participation and the use of social media by all public sector employees.
In particular, section 5 of the directive regulating political participation and communications with the media appears to water down the need for educators to stick to government policy.
Section 5.2 simply states that public officers on scales 6 and lower - which includes educators - are allowed to engage in public comment in a personal capacity.
However, directive 5.5 states that public sector workers should not comment publicly or be interviewed on matters concerning government policy without prior authority to do so. Requests are to be submitted to the permanent secretary of the relative ministry.
"Moreover, they are allowed to do so only as long as they ensure that their comments are being put forward solely as a matter of personal opinion. It is up to the officers concerned to ensure that their comments are not in any way to be interpreted as being an official comment of the government or the department where the public officer is employed at the time," it states.
In the case of Mallia, headmaster Portanier Mifsud denied that he had reprimanded her.
Writing on Facebook, he insisted he had simply brought up Mallia's appearance on the show when she visited his office regarding an unrelated matter.
He said he asked her if she had asked for permission to appear on the show, and asked for the names of students she claimed were skipping school due to anxiety caused by the policy.
He also refuted Mallia's claim in his defence that he told her he had orders to reprimand her "from above", insisting he had never received instructions to censor anyone.