Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia says it's been rec­om­mend­ed that manda­to­ry in­ter­ro­ga­tion of vis­i­tors be done at St Pius Boys' RC school where a teacher was stabbed re­cent­ly.

Ear­li­er this week, Stan­dard Two teacher Cathy Ma­haraj was stabbed five times by an icepick-wield­ing man who went to see her. She re­mains at hos­pi­tal re­cov­er­ing from her in­juries. The at­tack left stu­dents and teach­ers at the school se­vere­ly trau­ma­tised.

Yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said a per­son who knew the teacher was al­lowed ac­cess to the school and at­tacked the teacher. He said the min­istry con­sid­ered it a "grave as­sault on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem," adding they are now prob­ing why the school's pro­to­col sys­tem for en­try wasn't fol­lowed.

He said the min­istry has been hold­ing talks with MTS, the com­pa­ny which pro­vides se­cu­ri­ty for many gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties and dis­cus­sions are fo­cused on re­view­ing train­ing for all of­fi­cers. In the in­ter­im, the rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude the in­ter­ro­ga­tion of vis­i­tors by se­cu­ri­ty and se­cu­ri­ty es­corts for all vis­i­tors to St Pius.

MTS pro­vides se­cu­ri­ty for oth­er schools, in­clud­ing pri­ma­ry schools, though some of the lat­ter use in­di­vid­ual se­cu­ri­ty firms and these are re­quired to en­sure em­ploy­ees un­der­go rigid se­cu­ri­ty prepa­ra­tions.