[WATCH] Teachers touched inappropriately and threatened by students - MUT

Union strongly condemns bullying incidents and calls for support of directorates • Video by Ray Attard

The Malta Union of Teachers is today declaring a trade dispute with the Ministry for Education and shall be holding industrial actions as follows. 

On Friday 20 February, all teaching grades (SMT, teachers, LSAs etc) at San Gorg Preca Boys Secondary School (Liċeo) Ħamrun shall report one hour late for work. In case of further reported and confirmed incidents of violence and threats suffered by teaching grades, the union shall order further industrial actions.

The union explained the move, triggered by a number of bullying reports, in a press statement.

"The union has been receiving reports about the unbearable situation faced by members at San Gorg Preca Boys Secondary School (Liċeo) Ħamrun for the past months," the statement reads.

"Members are facing a situation where they cannot conduct their work without suffering continuous disruptions, threats and serious misbehaviour from individuals or groups of students. The union has alerted the Ministry and Directorates about this situation several times and despite discussions held and action taken by the directorates to support the school, the situation has hardly improved. 

"This situation is also affecting students who are victims of such misbehaviour resulting in incidents of bullying and disruptions to their teaching and learning process.”

Some of the more common incidents include teachers being touched inappropriately or threatened by their students and students bullying each other.

Commenting during a press conference in front of the school, MUT President Kevin Bonello stated, “The union cannot accept a situation where teaching grades cannot conduct their work in a safe working environment. The MUT also expects that the school is urgently supported in addressing the situation.”

The MUT has drawn up a list of short term and long term solutions to address the dire situation in this school. Among the long-term solutions proposed  MUT mentioned a different Secondary School system, whereby students are not placed into a school exclusively according to the catchment area they belong to, but based on areas of specialisation, according to the subjects they choose to study.  MUT has also proposed a change in the educational law to make it possible for children under the age of fourteen to be punished for their actions in some way or another.

“We have already had discussions with Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela  on the laws regarding criminal responsibility for those under fourteen years of age,” Bonello said.

In response to the MUT statements, Education minister Evarist Bartolo, stressed that a lot of work is being done regarding the issue of bad behavior at the school in question.

“This problem has been cropping up sporadically for a number of years now.”

“The discussion of specific cases needs to be taken in a wider context of discipline at school,” Bartolo added.

Bartolo said that a lot of work had been done by the Directorate itself and by the Principal of the school to address this issue.

“A number of initiatives started from a report about this school’s educational and social situation, have made a great difference.”

“There is no easy solution to this issue, but we need to keep in mind that the children’s health should be our priority.”

Bartolo added that keeping children away from schools was in no way the method to overcome this hurdle.