Malta, like the rest of the world, is grappling with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Although it can be argued that the government could have initially been more proactive in safeguarding public heath from contact with Italy, it is now acting more decisively.

But as the first cases of local transmission are identified and the country moves from partial shutdown to a more general lockdown, the focus in the education sector in either scenario should be on the continuity of children’s learning. But is it? The government-MUT communication of last Thursday was less than forthcoming on how the teaching profession would fulfil its responsibilities towards students.

The communication spoke extensively about teachers’ rights and conditions, and about the opportunity that the lockdown gave for school sanitisation, maintenance and cleaning. Apparently, it is not OK for teachers to work in schools devoid of students, but it is OK for cleaning and maintenance staff to do so.

The communication also clarified that the shutdown was not a holiday, so teachers were still expected to work. But the only reference to this was that a committee would be set up to explore how distance learning could work.

The next day, this committee issued its first two initiatives. The first was to populate the department website with material that could be used by students.

The second was that teachers would be “encouraged to use online means to provide educational material and resources to students”, essentially extending the first initiative.

Yet, the use of virtual learning environments in schools has been ongoing for about 10 years. In these years there should have been a glut of material available to students, and for many subjects this is already the case. So the first ‘initiative’ was really a decision for the various sectors to share their material and platforms.

But learning is not primarily about the static availability of material. It is about the interaction between students and teachers that unlocks new insights and understanding. In spite of investment of big millions in ICT infrastructure, software, platforms and training, over the years successive administrations have not been able to overcome teachers’ reluctance to make mandatory the use of interactive virtual learning. And, reading between the lines of the second ‘initiative’, not even COVID-19 has managed to break the MUT’s immune system.

Twenty-first century learning requires a blended methodology that merges best practices in virtual real-time and asynchronous learning with more traditional classroom learning. Had this been practised and refined over the years in a systematic and sustainable fashion, today our schools would be much more limber in meeting the challenge of continuing learning in a lockdown context.

And apart from these technological solutions, could not have schools been empowered to, say, expect students to hand in so many essays or other written work by e-mail? The recently passed new Education Act gives more autonomy to state schools; the lockdown could have been an excellent opportunity to empower these schools to develop their own ways of how teachers could remain in touch with and support their students, even in low-tech ways.

The COVID-19 shutdown is certainly a big challenge for schools and families. But it is also an opportunity to rethink how schools ‘do’ teaching. The teaching profession needs to take up this challenge, and its responsibility, to ensure effective learning in this new context.