Two teachers’ unions have lashed out at education authorities, accusing them of scrimping on maintenance funds schools need to for badly dilapidated classrooms.
In separate statements, both the Union of Professional Educators and Malta Union of Teachers said that the Education Ministry was not making funds to maintain schools available.
The UPE said that students in at least three schools began the scholastic year to find classrooms missing desks, chars or cabinets.
“Educators working in the Gozo College as well as St Theresa College, have been welcomed with plums of dust and scattered furniture all around the school,” it said on Saturday.
“St Thomas Moore, St Ignatius and the Gozo College have several classrooms that do not have the necessary equipment such as desks, chairs and cabinets”.
The union said that in many cases it was left up to teachers to clear up classes and ensure they were safe for students.
It accused the Education Ministry of not giving heads of schools enough money to pay for school maintenance.
“Could this be one of the many reasons why educators are leaving the sector?” it asked rhetorically.
The MUT drove that point home in a statement of its own.
“Priorities in education are not right,” the union said, noting that while the ministry seemed willing and able to spend “millions” on labs for new applied subjects, it could not find the money to fix classrooms in serious need of repair.
Both unions’ statements came one day following reports that parents of young children at a Santa Venera kindergarten were left aghast by the disastrous state of a classroom there.
The MUT said that the problems at Santa Venera primary could not be pinned on school leadership or teachers there, who had done their utmost to keep the school clean and tidy.
“Interventions required at this school are clearly beyong ordinary plastering and require specialised personnel,” the union said.
Transport supervision
In its statement, the UPE also highlighted concerns about educators being overwhelmed with transport supervision duties.
The union said that it had asked the Education Ministry for details about educator-to-student ratios for transport supervision.
“It transpires that such ratios are non-existent,” the union said, warning that given that educators were tasked with supervising too many students at one go, accidents were more likely to occur.
Learning Support Educators were in a similar bind, the union said. In many cases, LSEs caring for special needs students were having to travel to the town where the student lived, parking their car there and then travelling to school elsewhere with the student, UPE said.