As students gear up to head back to school this week for the first full post-COVID scholastic year, the teachers’ union said staff shortages are back to what they were in the 2018/2019 academic year, the number of new educators remaining too low.

All students, from state, Church and independent schools, will be back in class by Wednesday and, although this year they will not be social distancing and wearing masks, Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) head Marco Bonnici said the issues experienced before the virus pandemic hit in 2020 persist.

“In the past years, we have not had an influx of teachers joining the profession and, therefore, the issues we had in 2018/2019 are still with us,” Bonnici said.

“We might even have staff who joined the education sector because they lost their job during the pandemic who might now be leaving again.”

More teachers are needed in primary level as well as for the core and science subjects in secondary schools. An increase in the number of educators that teach vocational subjects is also required, he said.

While actual numbers of missing educators will be known once everyone is back in school later in the week, Bonnici said he is already informed of state schools that have some classes still without teachers, although he refused to divulge the figure.

He said that while staffing concerns brought on by the pandemic – most classes had to be smaller to avoid overcrowding, resulting in some staff members being forced to cover subjects that were not theirs – should not be an issue this year, the reality is that young people are reluctant to become educators. This meant the number of available staff remains too little.

“We had over two years to try and get more young people to become teachers but this didn’t happen. To make matters worse, because the job market is what it is right now, we have had many leave the profession for jobs that offer better working conditions and financial packages,” Bonnici said.

Young people are reluctant to become teachers

Apart from the persistent staff shortages, Bonnici also flagged the long-term psychological impact of COVID on students as the main challenge educators will face throughout the upcoming year.

While students may not have fallen behind from an academic point of view, since classes were carried out online throughout the pandemic, Bonnici believes the psychological impact on children has yet to be addressed.

“We need to work on supporting students in order to deal with the impact the pandemic had on them and this will, no doubt, be a challenge,” he said.

Ongoing changes to curricula will also have to be dealt with in the upcoming year.

Asked about the upcoming school year recently, Education Minister Clifton Grima had said he was confident there would not be staffing issues once the school year kicked off.

A week before the start of the 2019 scholastic year, the government had issued a call for applications for retired educators to fill vacancies in 83 subjects as a temporary measure to make up for the shortage.

PN urges government to improve teachers' conditions

In a statement on Monday, the Nationalist Party urged the government to keep its electoral promise to improve the working conditions of educators.

In a statement to mark the opening of the scholastic year, it also urged the government to invest more in education and ensure that the education system is more inclusive and stimulates' pupils' creativity.   

Education should be among the government's highest priorities, the PN said.