Drink clouds 'sun-and-study' image

Reports of drunken language students blighting Malta's tourist centres this summer threaten to stall Malta's growing popularity as an English-learning destination, says Karl Schembri in The Guardian Weekly:

As a new day dawns in Paceville, Malta's tourist entertainment mecca, the rising sun catches lager and vodka bottles littering the street. Around a corner a crowd of foreign students - some of them below legal drinking age - gathers at a beer shop to stock up on more cheap alcohol. For some of these students it is only a short walk from the bars and clubs of the night before to their English language schools and, hangover permitting, another morning in class.

Young European students, attracted in their thousands each year by the promise of Malta's native fluency in English and Mediterranean sun, are increasingly falling foul of another more intoxicating cocktail: cheap booze and freedom from parents. This summer has seen a rise in complaints from locals and other tourists about young people running amok and reports in the foreign press that the problem could be getting out of hand.The Goteborgs Posten, an influential Swedish newspaper, reported last month that students in Malta have "sex on the beach, unlimited access to alcohol, drugs and nightlife", while images of teenagers engaged in drunken brawls or unconscious on the street have been making headlines..

But while English language students may be boosting figures, tourists who share the same hotels during the peak summer season have complained about young people more interested in all-night antics than study. Earlier this summer a British couple from Nottinghamshire who have been holidaying on the islands for the past 29 years were prompted to write an appeal to the Maltese president, Eddie Fenech Adami, not to "let just a few spoil [the country] for the many". "Of the 14 nights we stayed at the hotel," wrote Huw Morris from Worksop, "we only had four and a half good nights' sleep."..

Laws introduced a decade ago to regulate schools and related non-academic services are hazy about the roles and enforcement obligations of authorities. Since 1996, the ministry of education has licensed language schools under a national accreditation scheme, but schools are not required to supervise underage students during non-academic activities...A surprisingly hardline response has come from the opposition green party, Alternattiva Demokratika, which has called for a "zero-tolerance policy" towards delinquent students. Its chairperson, Harry Vassallo, said the nuisance to residents living close to language schools had "a serious cost that must be accounted for"...