Miriam Dalli ends up in the middle of a storm over Year 11 Maltese exam text

Environment Minister Miriam Dalli has disassociated herself from a Maltese exam exercise that used an opinion piece she penned earlier this year to test students’ comprehension skills.

The exam mishap has led to an investigation by the Education Ministry that said exam papers are set by an independent board without ministerial interference.

The controversy revolves around the Maltese language exam undertaken by Year 11 State school students today. For the comprehension exercise students were presented a text taken from an opinion Minister Dalli penned in sister newspaper Illum in January this year.

The text, which spoke about the successful results in differentiated waste collection by Wasteserv, a State agency, clearly showed that the article in question was authored by Dalli.

Writing on his Facebook wall, former PN MP Jason Azzopardi said it was shameful that students were presented with an opinion piece written by a minister. He went on to take a dig at the minister over the accidental death of a Wasteserv employee over which criminal charges have been issued against several managers at the State agency.

“Miriam Dalli’s propaganda. You know what you should have asked students to reply about Wasteserv? Why you did not shoulder political responsibility when Wasteserv killed a worker and instead you lied about him! Shame,” Azzopardi wrote while displaying the exam paper.

In a Facebook post shortly after the issue was flagged, Dalli said she had “absolutely nothing to do” with the exam question.

“A text with my name as a minister on it should have never been included in an exam paper. I have children and understand that the name of a politician in an exam paper irks everyone,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry said in a statement that it will be setting up a board to “establish the facts, reach its conclusions and make recommendations to improve the current system”.

It added that no ministry has access to exam papers or their content. “There are autonomous structures and procedures that have been in place for years to ensure that these processes are operated by technical people in different grades of the educational sector, without any political or administrative interference,” the ministry said.