The newly-opened National Sport School will see two firsts in the Maltese education system. The school will be the first of its kind, in terms of offering budding athletes the chance to develop their education in tandem with the need for specialised sports training as they grow up, in secondary school.

In addition, the school will be the first state school to offer co-ed (mixed) classes in secondary school. Both the moves are positive. The thought process that has gone into creating the school is also good. Rather than take on a whole bulk load of students, it has been decided that only one class (Form 1) will be taken on this year, expanding over the years to a maximum of 200 by the time the inaugural class reaches Form 5.

The school is autonomous and has its own headmaster, George Micallef. It is a national school, meaning that the students are from various localities around Malta and Gozo. The government says the new school is one of many strategic initiatives and measures that the government has been working on to give the sports sector a boost.

The students who were selected to join the school practise eight different sports: Football, athletics, swimming, gymnastics, karate, basketball, rugby and bowling. However, football is the most popular, with 18 boys and five girls practising the sport.

The students will have 28 lessons per week in academic subjects and 12 linked to sport; eight of these (four double lessons) will be in the sport they practise, three will be lessons in the basic sport fundamentals (athletics, swimming and gymnastics) and one will be about the students’ holistic development.

As for the other subjects, the students will naturally not have any Physical Education lessons and will have one lesson per week in each of the following: History, Geography, Personal and Social Development (though the holistic development sessions will make up for this), and Information and Communication Technology.

The idea, overall, is a good one. Malta is not the best when it comes to sports, yet in the London Olympics, we saw that our athletes can compete – and on the world stage. We know that they face a struggle in finding funding for their training, and starting at a much younger age will allow them to develop the skills they will need to flourish on the world stage. Football will always be the sport of choice for many youngsters, and if we offer one word of warning, it would be not to place too much emphasis on this one discipline.