Usually, I do not reply to people like C. Micallef of Fgura (TMID, 14 July) who think that they have every right to write about education and about how teachers’ working conditions should be changed in order to suit their own, often egoistic, needs.

I am not going to answer the letter, point by point, due to the amount of inaccuracies there are.

However, one point in his conclusion requires clarification: maybe abroad, summer holidays are somewhat shorter than those in Malta, and this is owing to the more clement weather they have. In order to make up for this, they have longer, much longer, breaks throughout the academic year, particularly longer recess in each of the following: November (Halloween), Christmas and Easter, as well as the Second Mid-term (usually Carnival).

Then, again, if he wants to put Maltese teachers at a par with those abroad, particularly the UK, then, he should start contemplating the same salaries for Maltese teachers as those abroad! Take a look at the The Times educational supplement and you will see for yourself the kind of salaries on offer!

Some parents seem to want the cake and eat it – they get children into an already overpopulated world in order for them to feel that they have accomplished something in life, and then they push all responsibility on to society or the educational establishment to look after.

That is not on. And schools in general should be on the lookout for this! Children need their homes and need looking after – by those who begot them in the first place!

Franco Farrugia

Pieta