Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1266179
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JULY 2020 NEWS priately by the students." Teachers felt demotivated by this sort of behaviour on the part of students and parents who "do not respect teachers... their child is always right, and the teacher is always wrong." One of the interviewees claimed that he used to receive notes from a parent almost every two days ... "where she used to pick on anything, I would say [and] used to find defects in anything I did." Galea refers to a "bullying culture" in which "teachers end up being bullied by parents" which leaves educators with "no choice except to feel as if they are fighting a losing battle". But teachers expressed different views when it comes to educational re- forms, with some lamenting the slow pace of change while others feeling fa- tigued by reforms. One teacher described "the school system as being too archaic," demand- ing immediate transformative change. "The system... at the end of the day it was like a production line, you pro- duce the students and make them pass their exam". Still others showed signs of reform fatigue. "One minister wanted the col- lege system, the other wanted co-ed, and so on. Everybody wants to leave their mark; everybody wants to be known in [the] future as someone who brought a change in education." The author acknowledges the limita- tions of qualitative findings originat- ing from fifteen individual narratives as one lacking statistical representa- tion and recommends a quantitative survey to generalise the findings to the whole population understudy. He also recommended a study on how to at- tract invested leavers back to the pro- fession to alleviate the current recruit- ment issues. "A study should focus on how to attract invested leavers back to the profession to alleviate the current re- cruitment issues... in Malta teacher re- tention is currently encumbered with: an exponential rise in educators who voluntarily resign from the profession; a decline of teacher graduates from the University of Malta; a recurring problem of unfilled teacher vacancies throughout the scholastic year; an increase in the recruitment of supply teachers who do not have the appro- priate qualifications and a school's cli- mate of disengagement and pessimism that current in-service teachers have to deal with." jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt What the teachers said "A professional teacher, who studied five years at university, now has no opportunity to actually own a property..." "We had to provide our own resources, as [the school] provided us with nothing, not even a photocopier... so we had to provide students with everything. I used to spend a lot of money from my own pay!" "I don't think there is enough discipline. We gave the students so much freedom." "Parents do not respect teachers... their child is always right, and the teacher is always wrong." "I was not expecting that sort of antagonism from society... Parents, adults, authority figures not being on your side... that was, that was too much!" "The teachers were, demotivated... people sitting in a staff-room complaining about what is happening in school and how nothing can be done [about the system]."