The Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools is highlighting progress made in building a large new school in Qawra, just as one of the locality's former mayors has complained of repeated project delays.

The €13m school will host up to 500 primary school pupils in 40 classes. Facilities will include a large hall, a kindergarten, a childcare centre and underground car park for 400 cars. 

In a video uploaded to its Facebook page this month, the foundation said building works are "in their final stages" and that the school would open to students "during 2020".   

Graziella Galea, the former Nationalist mayor of St Paul's Bay, which incorporates Qawra, in an opinion piece published by Times of Malta on Monday pointed out how the project has been repeatedly delayed.

She said the new school in Qawra was promised in 2015 and was meant to host the first students in September 2017. The date was then pushed back to September 2018 and September 2019.

"As the European Parliament and the local council elections were getting closer we were promised that if not fully open, at least part of the school would be used for the teaching of the locality’s children this year. However, this did not materialise." she said.

Times of Malta reported in July how the repeated delays in the school's opening was causing overcrowding at the ‘old’ St Paul’s Bay Primary School, particularly due to the locality’s sharp population increase, the largest registered across the country.

The Education Ministry has been forced to install temporary mobile classrooms in the school’s grounds to cater for the emergency.