Morning commuters, beware: a new scholastic year is about to begin.
School buses will ferry a total of 33,761 students to their respective schools this year across 3,449 bus routes planned for students of state, Church and independent schools.
Roughly 14,000 of those children using school transport will be attending state schools. The remaining 19,730 will be taken to Church and independent schools.
The government said this week that it will not be allowing any new road works near schools in the coming weeks. Contractors with existing permits must inform authorities about works during the back-to-school period.
Transport Malta is deploying 65 additional enforcement officers to help manage traffic flows during morning commutes.
Students will start slowly returning to classrooms next Wednesday, as the 2024-25 scholastic year officially begins.
State schools will be a hive of activity from Monday, when just over 8,200 educators there return to work.
On Wednesday, 29,086 students in primary and secondary state schools will fill school benches. 5,911 kindergarten students will follow them the following week.
There will be 235 new teachers and educators within state schools this year, the Education Ministry noted in a press release issued on Saturday.
The press release highlighted the completion of “three major infrastructural projects” costing a combined €64 million over the summer months, but stopped short of naming them. It also noted that various childcare centres and schools had undergone renovation works.
A new school in Msida has been equipped with digital infrastructure and work to set up digital classrooms available over Microsoft Teams and My School completed, it added.
Education Minister Clifton Grima said preparatory work for the upcoming school year began “exactly as the previous scholastic year ended”.
Much of that work focused on ensuring that all classrooms were properly staffed with educators, he said, with a lot of effort also dedicated to improving the classroom and school environment, he said.
The minister thanked school workers and teachers for their efforts and wished them a successful year.