Dyslexia specialists demand end to Malta's fail-twice university rule

A panel of 26 local dyslexia specialists has called for sweeping changes to how Maltese schools identify, teach, and assess students with dyslexia, laying out their findings in a report published in April by the Malta Dyslexia Association (MDA). The report was funded through the Small Initiatives Support Scheme (SIS), with the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector (MCVS) acting as managing body.

It covers state, Church, and independent schools and ranges across every stage of compulsory education. Among its sharpest findings is a warning about staffing. The specialists identified a severe shortage of Inclusion Coordinators (INCOs), support educators, and literacy specialists across Maltese schools.

In their absence, untrained staff or supply teachers are stepping in to deliver primary literacy instruction. The report argues this pushes classroom teachers away from direct responsibility for their students' literacy development, reducing the continuity of instruction those students receive. Learning Support Educators (LSEs), meanwhile, are frequently deployed only once a child holds an official statement, leaving many students with known dyslexia without support in the interim.

The report also takes aim at how diagnostic information is managed. Keeping physical files locked in designated administrative offices is described as impractical, and the specialists call for a shift to secure digital portals that would allow relevant staff to access a student's profile when it matters. Perhaps the most politically pointed recommendation concerns university access.

The report states that under the University of Malta's current model, students with documented learning difficulties must fail their core SEC examinations in Mathematics, Maltese, and English twice before qualifying for entry concessions. The report calls for that requirement to be scrapped entirely, arguing that concessions should be granted by default where a learning profile is already documented.

'Retaining the current failure-first requirement risks discouraging and effectively denying many students the opportunity to pursue tertiary education, to the detriment of their mental health, prospects, and socioeconomic contributions,' the report states. The specialists extend a similar argument to specialist schools for performing arts, visual arts, and sport. The report criticises the use of traditional academic grades as entry criteria, arguing this excludes students whose strengths are spatial or kinaesthetic rather than academic.

On classroom practice, the report advocates a mandatory national shift to a Structured Literacy Framework — one that explicitly teaches phonemic awareness, sound-symbol correspondences, and word structures. It argues that balanced literacy frameworks are less effective for learners with dyslexia. For Maltese-language teaching specifically, the specialists recommend scaling back content expectations for dyslexic children and adopting a bottom-up approach centred on linguistic mastery, with separate grades awarded for Maltese language and Maltese literature to better reflect individual learner profiles.

The report also criticises the way School-Based Assessments (SBAs) are currently administered in local schools, with assessments used as unannounced spot tests or mini-summative tests that generate unnecessary anxiety for dyslexic students. The report calls for assessments to be scheduled well in advance. On spelling, the specialists want to see the dictation of arbitrary high-frequency word lists replaced with systematic word-family and pattern retrieval strategies.

At secondary level, the report highlights the problem of multiple concurrent assignments from different subject departments overwhelming neurodivergent students, and calls for cross-departmental coordination within schools to manage workload. Subject teachers, it adds, should provide notes and learning materials in advance so that students can make effective use of assistive tools such as Immersive Readers.

The report demands the creation of a National Literacy Task Force or Board, a body that would carry a legal mandate to establish national implementation standards, vet and approve evidence-based programmes, and enforce institutional compliance across all school sectors. It calls on the Ministry for Education and relevant parties to implement multi-level intervention structures rather than incremental tweaks to existing arrangements.