Once again Evarist Bartolo ("PQ&A", The Sunday Times, October 12) wrongly refers to and takes out of context, the figure of 2,000 students who, in his opinion, "are failing when completing their basic education every year". Some, most erroneously, have interpreted this figure as representing those who do not even know how to read or write.

As I had the opportunity to point out on several occasions, Mr Bartolo uses his own yardstick to decide who is ready and who is not for the world of work. Where did he get this 2,000 figure? This figure, which is now being used as though it were some dogma of faith, was drawn up by Mr Bartolo around a year ago before last year's Budget. The figure is calculated by taking an amount of students who do not sit for the SEC exams, and adding to them all those who fail in Maltese, English and Mathematics, including all those who get grades 6 and 7. Are these the best figures to gauge whether students have the necessary skills to succeed in the labour market?

Mr Bartolo continues to make the unfortunate mistake of taking figures out of context and therefore his assumptions are flawed. If we take the number of students who are annually receiving post-secondary education we find that over the past six years there has been an average of 4,378 students entering the first year of one of the many post-secondary courses available. This year more than 4,900 entered first-year, a figure which represents 88% of the age 17 cohort (number of children born in 1985: 5,596).

Another study that shows how students are progressing in education is the Guidance Unit's Tracer Study which states that 69% of students are continuing their education. The most accurate figures we have are those which show the amounts of students in education at various ages and their percentages of the age cohort. In 2002, at age 16 more than 75% (4,044) were in education. At age 17, the average age for post-secondary students, 57.5% (3,210) were in education. At age 19, the average age for students at University and MCAST, 33.2% (1,936) were still in education.

If you only look at the crude data and take them out of context you cannot see the whole picture. Mr Bartolo, for example, excludes those who take resits, those who try again the next year and those who get passes less than 5 in one or more subjects. He completely dismisses these students as not having the necessary skills for the world of work.

Some other figures taken out of context, which also featured in this article, were those which compared us to the other European member and acceding states. Mr Bartolo first of all makes a gross mistake in saying that only 9.5% of the labour force has secondary education. This figure in fact relates to those having post-secondary education (Higher Secondary - ISCED levels 3-4). The actual figure for those with at least secondary education (ISCED Levels 1-2) stands at 81.6.

Even by closing an eye to this 'mistake' we must put things in context. The reality is that a person who today is only 45 years old lived his childhood without secondary education for all. Until 1987 University was limited to a few hundreds, not to mention the closure of MCAST by Mr Bartolo's predecessors. It is only recently that the number of students following post-secondary and tertiary education has reached the levels we know today.

Having said all this, it is a fact that our country needs to increase its number of post-secondary and tertiary students to provide the economy with the human resource it needs. Our education system must also provide the necessary structures and programmes to provide life-long education and training for an evolving economy in the process of perpetual change and restructuring.

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