The government will double the amount it forks out to help private schools next year, according to new budget figures, with a recent agreement to fund teachers’ salary rises in private schools set to increase the government’s bill to €15m.

This figure includes money that the government spends to provide private schools with learning support assistants, a measure which typically costs around €8m each year.

But the government will have to reach deep into its pockets for an extra €7m next year, the lion’s share of which is believed to be going towards salary increases for teachers in private schools, as was announced in an agreement last September.

The agreement will see the government inject a total of €27m over the next five years into private schools to help cover the cost of teachers’ salary increases. In return, the schools will cap their fee increases at a yearly 12%.

The plan was announced weeks after the government and the teachers’ union agreed on a new sectoral agreement that would see some 11,000 educators in state schools receive a pay rise.

The scheme has been criticised in some quarters, with Moviment Graffitti describing the move to subsidise private tuition as “unjustifiable”.

But the government has defended the move, saying that, if it hadn’t intervened, tuition fees would have risen by almost a quarter, with catastrophic consequences on families and children.

Tax credits will also double

Families who send their children to private schools also stand to benefit from larger tax credits next year.

Parents with a child who attends a private kindergarten will now receive a €3,500 tax credit (up from €1,600), while those with children in private primary and secondary schools will receive a handsome €4,600 and €6,500 tax credit respectively (up from €1,900 and €2,600).

Church schools to receive €138m

Meanwhile, Malta’s Church schools are set to receive an even bigger bump, with the government planning to fork out €138m next year, €20m more than during 2024.

Much of these funds are expected to go towards paying salaries for educators and staff members, in line with a 1991 agreement between the government and the Church, which saw the government agree to finance Church schools’ running costs in return for the transfer of several Church properties to the state.       

Financing Church schools is rapidly becoming more costly to the government’s coffers, with its allocation rising by almost 50% in just the space of five years, from 2020’s €95m allocation to €138m next year.