‘Not trained for this’: Malta teachers reveal daily struggle to support autistic pupils

‘Not trained for this’: Inside Malta’s classrooms where teachers feel lost supporting children with autism

Ms Lara Briffa, a Year 4 teacher at a government primary school in Żabbar, still remembers the first time eight-year-old Luke* had a meltdown in class. “He started screaming, flapping his hands and knocking over chairs. Twenty-eight other kids stared at me like I was supposed to fix it,” she says. “I love Luke, but I had zero training for this.”

Across Malta and Gozo, stories like Lara’s are multiplying. A 2023 Education Ministry audit estimates that one in every 65 state-school pupils is on the autism spectrum—up from one in 110 five years ago—yet fewer than 15 % of mainstream teachers have completed any accredited autism-specific training. The gap is turning classrooms into pressure cookers, leaving educators exhausted and neurodivergent children at risk of falling behind.

“We were trained to deliver literacy and numeracy outcomes, not sensory diets,” laughs Briffa, half-serious. “When Luke covers his ears at the church bells from the nearby parish, I improvise with noise-cancelling headphones I bought myself.” Her experience mirrors the national picture: the Malta Union of Teachers reports that 62 % of surveyed educators feel “moderately to extremely unprepared” to manage autism-related behaviours.

The cultural backdrop makes the issue even more delicate. In tight-knit Maltese villages, disability still carries stigma. “Parents worry that if their child is labelled autistic, neighbours will whisper at the festa,” notes Dr Isabelle Camilleri, a child psychiatrist at Mater Dei Hospital. “So kids arrive in school undiagnosed, masking symptoms until they explode.”

Government policy has tried to keep pace. Since 2019, every state school has been assigned an inclusion coordinator, and the Learning Support Centre in Floriana runs optional evening modules on autism awareness. However, participation is voluntary and places are limited to 30 teachers per cohort—barely scratching the surface of the 4,300-strong workforce.

Meanwhile, the ripple effect on the community is growing. Last October, a Gozitan mother pulled her autistic son out of school after he spent three weeks sitting alone in the corridor; the teacher said the boy’s rocking was “disruptive”. The incident triggered a protest outside the Ministry of Education in Valletta, with placards reading “My child deserves a lesson, not a corridor”.

Private solutions are emerging but remain patchy. Swatar-based NGO Step Up for Autism now offers weekend workshops to teachers at €35 a pop—cheap by EU standards, yet still out of reach for educators already paying €6 a day for parking in Sliema. “We fill up within hours,” says founder Mark Pace. “But we’re basically charity plugging a state failure.”

Some schools are pioneering grassroots fixes. At St Benedict’s College in Kirkop, staff created a ‘quiet yurt’—a canvas dome in the yard where pupils decompress with beanbags and fairy lights. “We crowd-funded €2,000 through the village band club,” beams assistant head Maria Grech. “Even the każin tal-banda donated raffle proceeds.”

Yet without systemic change, such initiatives remain islands of hope. The MUT is pushing for autism training to become a mandatory component of the PGCE, the postgraduate teaching qualification offered at the University of Malta. “We wouldn’t send a teacher into a lab without science training,” argues union president Marco Bonnici. “Why send them into a classroom with autistic children unprepared?”

Back in Żabbar, Lara Briffa has taken matters into her own hands. Every Tuesday after lessons, she FaceTimes her cousin in Melbourne—an ABA therapist—for impromptu tips. “It’s 11 p.m. her time, but she walks me through visual timetables and sensory breaks,” Briffa says. “I shouldn’t need an international lifeline to teach a Maltese child.”

Until training catches up with reality, Malta’s educators will keep improvising—quiet yurts, borrowed headphones, late-night Zooms—while Luke and thousands like him wait for a system that sees their needs as core curriculum, not charity.