Before I went to Malta I contacted the ESE organisation. This is an organisation in Malta that provides English courses, but also provides work placements. On the website I've found the concact person for the work placements: Simon Agius. I've had contact via mail a year before my leaving, and I've contacted him almost every month. Simon found a work placement for me and my friend, a private primary school. We (me and my friend) didn't have any contact with the primary school before we went, so we didn't know the teachers at our school or the class we would get. In our first week in Malta we went to visit our practice school, and there we met the staff en I found out that I would be teaching prep 1 (5-6 years old). They placed me in this group since I need to talk English and the English in higher classes is much more difficult than in the lower classes.
Malta has a lot of holiday since it is a very Catholic country. In a regular week we would go to the primary school from Monday through Thursday. On Friday we went to the ESE-school for our English course, but these lessons were only once in two weeks. During our stay (end of February till end of May) we had one week off because of the Carnival holidays and we have two weeks off because of the spring holidays. We had about 5 days off because of religious days.
At school the day starts at 08.00 am, we arrived at school at 07.45 am.
The day ended at 13.30 p.m.
All teachers came at the same time as the children, and the teachers left as the same time as the children.
It was a 45 minute drive from our home to the primary school, so we were home at 14.30
A primary school in Malta is very different from a primary school in the Netherlands.
I didn't have the opportunity to visite any other schools, so I only know the education in Malta bases on my own workplacement.
Parents have to pay for their children to go to the private school, they don't have to pay for their children to go to the government school. A lot of children go to the private school when they are young to learn basic English. When they are 6/7 years old, their parents place them in a government school. The classes are very big in the younger groups. I had a group of 25 children (which is normal in Holland), but the classroom was very small. My mentor has a group of 33 children next year.
Even though the children in my class were 5/6 years old, they could read, write and do maths. The children get homework every day. The education is very outdated. The teachers stands in front of the classroom and tells all the information. They do have a smartboard in the classroom, but the smartboard is alsmost only used to write on, just like they would do on a blackboard. The children have lessons in English, Maltese, Maths and religion. The children have work books for every lesson, they also take the workbooks home for homework. All the childrean have their own bags which they bring to school every day. In their bags is their lunch and their folder. Their foulder contains their reading book and it contains a little book for parents and the teacher to write notes in. Parents are not allowed to come into the school, they drop their child of at the gate and the children walk into the school on their own. Communication between teachers and parents is through notes
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