As expected, the Malta Union of Teachers has rejected the idea of increasing the number of school hours per day and the number of school days, suggested to The Malta Independent on Sunday last week by Labour education spokesman Evarist Bartolo.

“The agreement reached (on the current number of school hours and days) is there to stay,” newly elected MUT president Kevin Bonello said to a specific question put by this newspaper.

“The number of hours and school days are not decided [arbitrarily by] the MUT but by an agreement reached with the Directorate of Quality Standards in Education (DQSE, which regulates all schools in Malta), the Education Ministry, the Directorate for Educational Services, the Public Administration Human Resources Office, the Public Administration Collective Bargaining Unit and the Finance Ministry,” said Mr Bonello.

“The number of school hours and days is regulated by an agreement reached with all the above parties. The amount of work done to reach this agreement… runs into many years and the agreement reached is there to stay, as declared by the government and by the union many times.”

The MUT is therefore not prepared to even consider the proposal made by Mr Bartolo, who said that “we should seriously consider increasing the number of days at school and extending the time spent at school”. This, he said, should go hand in hand with other measures to ensure that “…at school we focus on what is essential and crucial for the development of knowledge, competences and skills in our students”.

With 170 days of school, Malta has one of the shortest school years in the world. Prof. Roger Murphy from Nottingham University said that this puts Maltese students at a disadvantage when compared to their counterparts.

In the US, students attend school for 180 days, but there is currently a push, spearheaded by President Barack Obama, to increase the number to 200. Japan leads with 243 school days.

But the MUT is unmoved by such statistics and the plans of other countries. Asked whether the MUT will consider moving its position to allow for an increase in the number of school hours and days, Mr Bonello said: “The difficulties in competitiveness with other countries are absolutely not dependent on the number of hours or days, which in our case are on a par with most of the other Mediterranean regions. Expert educators will know that education is not a question of competition and the quality of education depends on the curriculum being offered and the support services and resources that are being offered in schools.”

At the same time, however, teachers often complain that they have to rush through their syllabus because they do not have enough time. This is true, Mr Bonello said. “But if anyone asks teachers for more in-depth information about this aspect, it will immediately become obvious that the current syllabi, although very well built and conceived, are too vast and too detailed in most of the subjects and areas when compared with all fellow European countries. This difficulty has been highlighted and debated for many years by many stakeholders. The issue has finally been taken up by the government and the DQSE has itself launched a reform of the Curriculum Framework and is reforming all the relevant syllabi over the coming years. This is an extremely important development that occurred recently which was unfortunately scarcely covered by the media.”

Also writing in today’s issue (see page 17), Christopher Bezzina, who spearheads the Programme in Educational Leadership within the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta, argues that high-achieving nations treat their teachers as professionals and that true investment in our teachers has so far eluded the school improvement discussion

“The crux of the matter is not extending the number of school days and hence school hours,” he writes.

“Things could very much remain the same. What is critical is how teachers engage with each other and with their students. The central theme of our discussion should be investing in teachers to identify new learning opportunities for them. In this way we embrace the notion of schools as communities of learning. This implies that we start respecting teachers for what they truly are – professionals.”

Meanwhile, in comments given to this newspaper, Prof. Murphy called for more regulation with regard to private tuition that is given to students to compensate for the lack of contact hours they have with their teachers in school. In all, some 78 per cent of students in fourth and fifth forms attend private lessons in one or more subjects.

But the MUT does not want to go into the issue of regulating private lessons. “The MUT represents all educators within the framework of the place of work as stipulated by Maltese law. The union has no jurisdiction whatsoever on settings of private tuition,” Mr Bonello said.

However, he acknowledges that our education system is geared more towards imparting knowledge and facts than helping students develop their thinking skills.

“Yes, the MUT has been asking for a review of the educational system for a long time, because for many years it has been geared towards examinations rather than holistic education,” he said. “It is thus with a certain degree of satisfaction that the union is now witnessing that its various pleas and suggestions over the years are finally being taken up and a review is being proposed by the DQSE. The union will be giving its own proposals and feedback to the new Curriculum Framework both from a professional perspective as well as from a trade unionist approach.”