Only 11% of private school students use school transport

A mere 2,720 children, 10.8%, out of Malta’s 25,184 private school students make use of school transport. 

Only 14 out of Malta’s 80 church and independent schools offer any sort of school transport at all. However, figures tabled in Parliament on Friday by education minister Evarist Bartolo in response to a question by Labour MP Silvio Schembri show that only 35% of these students are taking up these services.

Out of these 14 schools, the San Andrea secondary school in Zebbiegh has the highest take-up rate, with 276 (68%) of its 408 students making use of its school transport services.

At the other end of the scale, only 51 (10%) of the 497 students attending the Stella Maris College in Gzira use the school’s private transport services.

The figures are likely to add fresh vigour to the Opposition’s repeated calls on the government to subsidise school transport for private school students – as it currently does for state school students - as a traffic alleviation measure.

“The tax rebate offered to parents whose children use private school transport has clearly not made a difference,” Opposition leader Simon Busuttil had claimed at a press conference following the announcement of the Budget for 2016. “The government didn’t even have the humility to accept my concrete proposal to subsidise school transport for children attending private schools.”

However, the Malta Teachers’ Union believes a far better solution would be for the government to fully subsidise public transport for students.

MUT President Kevin Bonello told MaltaToday that parents whose children attend private schools choose to drive them in the morning out of convenience’s sake, rather than because they don’t view the government’s tax rebate as an adequate sweetener.

“While state schools only service children from their own localities, private schools incorporate students from across the island, meaning that their school bus drivers have to pick up students from widespread areas,” he had told MaltaToday. “Therefore, a student from Wied il-Ghajn who attend San Anton School could have to spend up to two hours on the school bus as it picks up students from the district, as well as in Cottonera, and drives to Mgarr.

“This means that the child will have to wake up as early as 4am, and it is simply far more convenient for his parents to drive him to school.”