Arts in Education in Malta: State of the Art & Best Practices. National Report Summary

Malta's arts education landscape has undergone significant development over the past decade, shaped by an increasingly rights-based approach to cultural policy and a growing recognition of Cultural Awareness and Expression (CAE) as a core educational competence. The National Cultural Policy 2021 frames culture as a constitutional right, articulating 182 policy outcomes across eight priority areas that extend from urban development to digital transition and climate action. The National Education Strategy 2024–2030 reinforces this framing by proposing a radical curriculum overhaul that embeds digital, green, and artistic competences across all levels of formal education, while the Arts Council Malta Strategy 2025 operationalises these commitments through dedicated funding pillars, teacher-artist partnerships, and regional cultural strategies. This summary synthesises evidence from a structured desk review spanning 2014–2024, drawing on academic literature retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, and the University of Malta’s institutional repository, alongside eleven policy documents and thirteen practice initiatives.