More than 270 state school students got an exclusion for misbehaving during this scholastic year, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo told Parliament this evening.

He was replying to a parliamentary question by PL MP Etienne Grech, who requested information on school exclusions from the past three years.

The Minister said that no less than 277 students faced temporary exclusion from their respective school during this scholastic year. The figure exceeds the number of exclusions reported in the two preiovus scholastic years. In fact, 262 students faced exclusion in the 2015 - 2016 scholastic year, and 241 reported in the year 2014 - 2015.

In private schools, exclusions were less common. In fact, some 64 students were excluded in this last scholastic year, 74 for the year 2015 - 2016 and 56 for the previous one.

A school exclusion can vary from one day up to 25 days, in certain cases.

 

The Minister said that most of these exclusions were given after cases of bullying, offensive language and breaking of school rules.