A new national policy on the teaching of Maltese as a foreign language (MLB – Malti bħala lingwa barranija) will now see all non-Maltese students within the education system learning the language at some level.
Launched on Thursday morning, the policy will see the introduction of new measures that will serve to strengthen the Maltese language, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said.
The minister said that foreign students must learn Maltese to integrate into Maltese culture, and added that this could not be done if there were no measures to promote the language to them.
Maltese as a foreign language would only be taught to foreign students.
In May last year, organisations including the Akkademja tal-Malti and the University’s Department of Maltese pushed back against government efforts to introduce a new MQF level 3 examination for Maltese as a foreign language.
Having educational resources in Maltese was imperative, the minister stressed, since the language was facing several challenges in the digital sphere.
The policy launched on Thursday proposes that migrant children or children with at least one parent with foreign documents be assessed on their command of Maltese at age seven, to determine whether they required lessons in Maltese as a foreign language.
Children who enter the schooling system in primary school (from ages 8-11) will be assessed on their command of Maltese and given an intensive training course of the language to catch up to their peers, with a benchmark test at the end of Year 6 determining whether the student should progress with Maltese or MLB in middle school.
Foreigners who start in middle school (ages 11-13) will begin with MLB training and assessed every year to determine whether any particular student should progress to regular Maltese lessons, while those beginning in secondary school (ages 13-16) will be set on the course to achieving their Secondary Education Certificate in MLB.
Permanent Secretary for Education Frank Fabri said that MLB would not be replacing the teaching of Maltese at any stage and that the proposed framework would be addressing a gap within the system, targeting students that struggle to learn Maltese.
The policy also proposes that adults who arrive in Malta should also be offered lessons in MLB.
All Maltese teachers will need to get the necessary training to begin teaching MLB as a subject.
The public consultation will run till the end of October.