Updated 5.55pm

San Anton School headmaster Sandro Spiteri died on Monday, after battling an illness for months.

He was 56 years old. 

Spiteri, who also contributed to The Sunday Times of Malta as a columnist between 2016 and 2020, dedicated his professional career to education.

The chairman of the San Anton School's board, Matthew Bianchi, informed parents of Spiteri's death in an email on Monday afternoon. 

Parents were already aware that Spiteri was ill, with the headmaster having informed them himself, in an email last week, that he was in a palliative state. 

Spiteri was appointed head of school in 2020, marking a return to the school that he had left almost two decades prior. Spiteri spent eight years teaching Maltese in his first stint at San Anton, during which he also formed part of the school's senior management team. 

"It is such an honour to be back at San Anton School after 19 years. My eight years teaching here were a key professional formative experience that marked all my subsequent service.

"I look forward to leading a dynamic team, to re-imagine the San Anton School Ethos for the 21st century," Spiteri had commented upon being appointed headmaster. 

Before his return to the school, Spiteri led national programmes within the Foundation for Educational Services to expand family literacy.

In 2001 he founded the Malta Writing Programme which eventually became the first affiliate site in Europe of the National Writing Project in the USA.

Spiteri also gave lectures at the University of Malta on methodology, educational policy and teacher professionalism. 

He also served as director for Curriculum Management and eLearning with the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education, and was the main author of the national literacy strategy.

He went on to become head of the Quality Assurance Unit with the National Commission for Further and Higher Education, and later senior executive at the University of Malta’s Quality Assurance Unit.

MP David Thake said he was "heartbroken" to hear of Spiteri's death. He recalled him as a "workhorse" during a campaign in the 1980s to defend Church schools. 

"He single-handedly wrote a whole newspaper when we had published “Is-Sejħa”," Thake recalled. 

The Malta Chamber described him as a "veritable gentleman and a stalwart of the local independent schools sector." Spiteri previously served on the Chamber's education committee.

Generous, loyal, humble

Times of Malta print editor Mark Wood paid tribute to Spiteri. 

"Sandro was a highly valued columnist and leader writer for Times of Malta for four years. He not only wrote beautifully, a true master of the language, but always with tremendous insight into the subject at hand, usually politics or education," Wood said.

“His great ability to identify patterns in society was on full display in a graphic he contributed to The Sunday Times of Malta just two days after Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated on October 16, 2017. The graphic was published in the subsequent Sunday edition. 

“To my knowledge, he was the first to articulate the “climate” that enabled her murder, now formally described as the ‘climate of impunity’ by the judges who conducted the inquiry into her assassination.“

A graphic that Spiteri contributed, two days after Caruana Galizia was killed.

"Ever generous, he voluntarily stopped charging us for his work when the pandemic struck and the Times experienced brief financial hardship. Ever loyal, he stopped writing only when he took over the headship of San Anton School, feeling he would not be able to contribute to the full.

Ever humble, he thanked Times of Malta's editors for "allowing me to have a voice in the newspaper of record, which is a sort of immortality".

“Sandro’s contribution to Maltese society, in education and through his writing, will surely endure," Wood said. 

Spiteri is survived by his wife and three children.