Education Minister must explain SkolaSajf playworkers’ inexperience – PN

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo must explain why a number of the playworkers employed during last summer’s SkolaSajf programme were inexperienced, shadow education minister Joe Cassar said.

“Investigations showed that some of these playworkers weren’t even 18 years old,” Cassar said. “In response to a parliamentary question on 25 July, Bartolo himself had said that the playworkers employed in Klabb 3-16 and SkolaSajf were all employees of state, church or private schools.”

An inquiry board ordered by Bartolo and led by chairman Peter Cordina found out that it had taken a playworker at the Fgura primary school thirty minutes before realizing that a three-year-old boy who had asked to go to the toilet before the break had not returned. At the time, the 18-year-old playworker was working in a classroom of five children.
The investigation established that the three-year-old boy asked permission to go to the toilet just before the 11am break. CCTV cameras confirmed that the boy ran straight out through the main door and the school’s gate, both of which were “wide open”. At 11.10am, a person accompanied the child to the Fgura police station where contact was made with the parents. However, the playworker told the board that the school only became aware of the boy’s disappearance at 11.30am, insisting that that was the time the boy went missing.
After interviewing a number of persons from the school, the Foundation for Educational Services and the Educational Directorate, the board discovered that doors to the school were left open for three main reasons: a broken bell; no letter box for the postman to deliver the letters; no personnel or caretakers available to stand by the door to monitor who’s going in and out.

The situation, according to school’s headmistress, had been like that for the past five years.

Officials from the Foundation for Educational Services told the board that the incident had been caused by “the engagement of workers who didn’t receive the necessary training to work at SkolaSajf”. The majority of these playworkers were recruited through MCAST, following the summer school’s staff shortage that afflicted its opening last summer. The board also found out that the same boy who had run out of the school gates had also wandered away during a school outing at the cinema. The child, the board said, was sitting next to the same playworker when he got off the seat without her noticing. The boy’s mother had also warned the playworker from advance that her son was “hyper”.

“It is evident that the playworker didn’t have the necessary experience and maturity to work with such small children,” the board reported.

Bartolo tabled the report in parliament on Monday. However, Cassar said that Bartolo is “trying to displace his responsibility onto someone else”.

“The inquiry report simply pinned the blame on the Foundation for Educational Services, the same entity that was blamed for the SkolaSajf opening fiasco,” Cassar said. “Parents should have their minds at rest that their children are receiving their education in a secure environment. Instead, they are finding a minister who only seeks shelter for himself.”