MCAST has proposed a date to meet with the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT), to be held early next week, where they will present and explain its financial proposal for the new collective agreement, which expired over a year ago.                

MUT will be looking into this proposal and report to members accordingly. Unless otherwise informed, however, all directives and full-day strike on Friday 15th December is still on as planned.

MUT President Marco Bonnici said that "I completely understand students' concerns but I'm sure that they would agree that their lecturers should be respected, at least as one of their main educational resources, by being provided with adequate conditions of work."

Students have expressed concerns over a number of directives which could potentially affect them specifically - such as no communication with students beyond time-tabled lectures and contact hours, the non-use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), and the non-monitoring of apprenticeships.

Some students have told this newspaper that they were unable to access any of the material that has been published on the VLE since the start of the scholastic year ever since the directives were implemented on 4 December.

Asked about this, Bonnici insisted that students are still allowed to access the service and have the relative material made available to them given that the scholastic semester is almost over; issues facing some students have been solved.

Other students did say that their required material remained available to them, but raised other concerns over a dense assignment and exam schedule, as many teachers sent their students their assignments early, rather than stagger them, due to the industrial action.