As children returned back to schools on Monday, several classrooms had to resort to online schooling because many students and teachers are stuck in quarantine, according to a union head.

Malta Union of Teachers president Marco Bonnici said that on Friday, representatives of church, state and independent schools met with the Education Ministry to plan for Monday – when children returned to the classroom.

Schools were meant to open last week but this was delayed until Monday following concerns raised by the MUT.

Instead, students first started online lessons last week following an agreement between the union and government to dampen the impact of a surge in coronavirus cases over the holidays.

The high numbers, that exceeded 1,000 new cases daily, also resulted in tens of thousands of people having to quarantine.

Concerns over quarantine letter changes

Bonnici said that schools had surveyed their students and teachers in the past days, to understand how many were in quarantine and determine whether specific classrooms would remain online for now.

“I don’t have the exact figures as yet. But, so far, it seems like the situation is the same as it was before we left school for the holidays – with many students and teachers in quarantine," he said.

"At the moment we are mostly concerned about the recent changes in quarantine rules that did away with the need for release letters from the health authorities and placed the onus of returning to school on the individual. We will have situations in school where people return before they should,” he said.

Changes in quarantine rules came into force last week and did away with, among other things, the quarantine release letter previously issued by the authorities.  

Under the new rules, the duration of quarantine depends on the vaccination status of the induvial or their household members and the duration of quarantine will have to be calculated by the individual.

Unions and business lobbies have both argued that the change will be hard to effectively manage and flagged concerns about potential loopholes and grey areas.