Officials from the Education Ministry are ignoring procedures and calling peripatetic teachers to report for work at an alternative school, a teachers' union said on Tuesday.

In a brief statement, the Malta Union of Teachers directed teachers to ignore and not answer these calls.

It said the ministry was in a state of panic calling teachers on their private mobile phones or even their partners when they could not be reached.

This, the union said, was a desperate attempt by the ministry to cover its mess.

It said that now that the ministry's plan to stop teachers from taking action through court action had failed, officials were resorting to other methods.

An application for the court to stop industrial action by teachers was filed over the weekend after the trade unions registered an industrial dispute in protest over the deployment of peripatetic teachers.

But the case will have to be reassigned following the recusal of the judge.

The ministry's action were also later condemned by the Union of Professional Educators in a separate statement.

How can teachers be deployed at the last minute and be expected to teach a class with no preparation whatsoever?

This deployment exercise can only be seen as a large-scale babysitting operation to fill in the gaping holes that the Ministry should have prevented if it had had the foresight to plan for such contingencies. 

The ministry's "insane manoeuvre" is leading many educators to consider handing in their letter of resignation.

If resignation numbers continue to rise, Malta will have an educational melt-down imminently, the UPE warned.