Collaboration : joint working by individual state-maintained schools in a new statutory system in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

In October 2005, the Maltese Government embarked on a new phase of its national educational reform, which focuses on state compulsory primary and secondary schooling. A central part of this reform was the creation of state-maintained colleges. By February 2008 all state primary and secondary schools on the Maltese Islands were clustered into ten provisional colleges. This article aims to show the nature of collaboration that is required to sustain the establishment of school networks. It analyses the nature of collaboration in a policy context that requires joint working within and by individual schools and the formation of a partnership with parents and the community at large. Data collected from face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and documented material have underpinned the importance of the theme of collaboration as a core aspect of this case study. This article reports the results of phase 1 of a larger study that was undertaken in one college.