University students are once again paying for a lack of forward planning as well as a serious teacher shortage.

This week, ten students who are due to start their teaching practice on Monday were told that this vital five-week period of their Masters course has been shifted to other schools.

This might not sound like such a big deal ... but it is a huge problem for these students, who had spent the past few weeks attending observation sessions, during which they were getting accustomed to the classrooms they were assigned to teach during the month of November.

The aim of these observation sessions was to familiarise themselves with the students, the environment and the teaching methods employed at their assigned schools, so as to ensure that there is a smooth transition when they take over from the class teacher for a number of weeks.

However, they have now been redeployed to schools where the teacher shortage is more chronic, meaning that the work they have carried out over the past few weeks has been rendered pointless. The Education Ministry said yesterday that they have been assigned to the same grade, but this does not solve the problem, since they are still being assigned to a different school.

In comments to this newsroom, Education Minister Justyne Caruana said that the education department is ensuring that the affected students will be given the “necessary resources” so as to be able to do their teaching practice, but the issue is not that simple.

For a start, these students will have to start the familiarisation process from scratch, with less than a week to go until they take charge of a classroom. This is already a very daunting task for students who, up till now have no real experience teaching a class, and who are already severely overburdened with university work that also includes writing a thesis.

Secondly, this is only a temporary fix. Five weeks from now, these students will finish their teaching practice and return to their university lectures, which means that the classrooms they will be teaching will once again end up without a teacher. That is, unless the education department manages to find a solution by then.

Once again, the problem here is a lack of planning on solutions that have been evident for months. The teachers’ unions have been saying for a very long time now that there is a serious lack of teachers, yet decisions were left until the very last minute, and university students were used to plug the holes.

One has to consider the fact that this disorganisation, coupled with the way teachers and teaching students are being treated are one of the reasons why there is a teachers’ shortage in the first place.

In her comments to journalists, Caruana said that around half of university students want to pursue a teaching profession, but how many of them actually become teachers when they graduate? How many of them remain teachers after a year or two on the job?

The confusion experienced this week, added on to the stress of the past year and a half, has left many teaching students questioning whether they really want to become teachers. This is perhaps what the minister should be listening to. Are we really doing all we can to attract people to the teaching profession, or are we actually making it less desirable for them?