Education Bill misses wood for the trees - Sant

The Bill amending the Education Act was missing the wood for the trees, opposition leader Alfred Sant said in Parliament yesterday.

He said the real problem in the education sector was that the funds invested therein were not producing the dividends which one expected.

Malta was falling back in the most important sectors, such as science and information technology, but instead of tackling these problems, the government was focusing on changing structures and promoting the education minister's pet projects.

This, Dr Sant said, was a confused Bill which reflected a lack of focused thought on the key elements of the education sector, notably the need to improve performance in Malta's classrooms and lecture halls. How was it that 20 years after talking about IT, the education system was still not producing satisfactory results in this area? This legislation replaced existing bottles with new ones, but the contents remained the same.

The Education Minister was trying to belittle the problems of the education sector, such as illiteracy. It was useless comparing the current rate of illiteracy with the position 40 years ago. What was serious and unacceptable was the level of illiteracy in each cohort of current school-leavers.

What Malta needed was a proper plan for the curriculum to be implemented. What it did not need was the current situation where the Ministry of Education was disconnected from the teachers and the education sector was disconnected from the needs of the country, particularly the demands of the employment sector for skilled workers.

Replying, Education Minister Louis Galea said an objective analysis of the opposition's contribution to the debate showed that it was the opposition which was disconnected from reality. Its agenda was not to improve the education sector but to win votes.

Dr Sant had spoken about bottles, but he could only retort that "Empty vessels make most sound."

How could the opposition claim that the government lacked focus on the Lisbon Agenda or IT simply because they were not mentioned in the Bill?

How had Dr Sant come up with the idea that the government was ignoring illiteracy? And who had made comparisons with 40 years ago? The only comparison made was between the 1995 census and the latest census, which showed an illiteracy rate of 7.3 per cent of the total population. But if one were to calculate illiteracy on the basis of each cohort of school-leavers, that percentage was between 1.5 and two per cent.

Was the leader of the opposition living in the clouds when he claimed that the curriculum was not being implemented? This Bill provided even better tools for the aims of the curriculum to be achieved. But Dr Sant was clearly prejudiced and misinformed.

This Bill included a directorate to oversee quality standards and a new inspectorate section. So how could Dr Sant claim classroom performance was being ignored?

Labour spokesmen acted like theirs was the best record in education. Why not ask those in their mid-30s and 40s what they had had to suffer under Labour? Had anyone forgotten how under Labour there were just 219 graduates in 1985, whereas last year there were 2,635? And then these people accused the present government of ignoring the Lisbon Agenda!

The opposition said it agreed with separate roles for the regulator and the running of state schools, then its spokesmen criticised the government for creating new structures for this purpose.

Dr Galea insisted that this Bill was the fruit of a long process of research and consultations, as notably spelt out in the document Biex uliedna jirnexxu lkoll, along with the Lino Spiteri report on inclusive education and the recommendations of the National Commission for Higher Education, among others. The opposition had never reacted to those reports. So who was disconnected and out of touch? This was very different from the few pages of the so-called Labour policy on education.

As a father he could only worry that education could ever be in the hands of a Labour government, because it had not changed from the way it acted in the 1970s and 1980s, Dr Galea said.

How could the opposition criticise the Permanent Committee on Education and then complain of a lack of transparency?

Dr Galea augured that the opposition would be more constructive in the committee debate on this Bill.

Earlier in the debate, Marie Louise Coleiro (MLP) said that as an EU member Malta was in the forefront of per capita spending on education, but the results put it among the worst performers with a high rate of illiteracy, a large number of early school leavers and particular weakness in the area of science and technology, among others.

What results had been achieved so far from the national curriculum? What life skills had been imparted to students? What awareness had been imbued of consumer education and gender issues?

The reported increase in drug usage among younger children and the increase in the number of teenage pregnancies did not speak well of what the curriculum had been intended to do. Neither had any progress been seen in reducing exam tensions. Too many Maltese schoolchildren were burnt out and depressed. Bullying was another major problem which nobody seemed to know how to handle effectively.

Ms Coleiro said the rising cost of living was hampering education. Sending children on school outings was one of the first things missed out as parents tried to make ends meet. Uniforms had also become too expensive - as if uniforms necessarily made good and successful students.

The EU Community Action Programme held that poverty had a very adverse impact on educational attainment and led to social exclusion. The government must show it was politically determined to tackle such issues, because poverty had no political colours.

The university too needed to modernise its approach. Too many students felt they were in a glorified secondary school because of the way lectures were given and examinations were held. Assessment was basically on the individual student's memory. There should be better correlation between university courses and the working world: the course on tourism studies was a case in point, where after three years successful students could not find a related job.

Joe Brincat (MLP) said that while there was a lot of boasting about soaring numbers of students at the university, many graduates ended up looking for work, or working like glorified clerks and being exploited.

How much attention was being paid by the university to what the labour market really needed?

The number of new lawyers every year, for example, was untenable. Some new lawyers appeared in court only initially, then disappeared because they had had to take up other occupations, sometimes totally unrelated to their studies. So why was nothing done about the number of law students at the university?

While study enriched personality, it did not fill stomachs without jobs.

Instead of running non-productive courses and quoting student numbers, the university should meaningfully look into the problem, otherwise it would become just a place to have an increasing number of professors rather than people who were well prepared for working life. Were funds for the university being really well utilised in the best interests of society?

Anton Refalo (MLP) said the education sector in Gozo was in doldrums as in Malta.

What had the Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools really done in Gozo except the unauthorised destruction of the aesthetically-important Qala school?

Labour wanted to spur education in Gozo because it had to be the foundation of all progress.

Dr Refalo said important posts in the education set-up in Gozo were not being filled promptly. Another problem pertinent to Gozo was the coinage of high-sounding titles, such as Coordinator of Colleges, without any real coordination among the numerous administrative ranks in the Gozitan educational sphere.

There was an enormous waste of resources, especially among the three post-secondary schools in Gozo which could effectively make use of the same facilities.

Dr Refalo said more attention was needed for non-academic subjects, such as sports and culture.

A problem endemic to Gozo was the fact that, by comparison, Gozitan students left their families much earlier than their Maltese counterparts in order to study in Malta. This showed up the need for better preparation for such students to face life on their own.

Dr Refalo called for more Mcast courses in Gozo so that fewer Gozitans would need to study, and work, in Malta. Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono said a good number of Gozo graduates had been employed by several Gozitan companies. Gozitan students having to go to Malta were receiving Lm100 a month to make up for the extra expenses of having to stay in Malta. This meant it was not true that the government was abandoning Gozitan students.

Still, the number of post-secondary courses being held in Gozo was an all-time record. All major educational institutions had a presence in Gozo, even if with less courses than in Malta because of the island's size. Still, the number of MCAST students rose from 66 in 2002 to 113 last year. There had, indeed, been positive discrimination in favour of Gozo, with courses opening in Gozo even if for four or five students.

In the last 10 years the number of Gozitan students who were successful in the Junior Lyceum entrance examinations had risen from 50 per cent in 1995 to 64 per cent last year. Likewise, the number of Gozitan students carrying on their education beyond secondary school was up from 345 in 1999 to over 500 in 2005.

As for the ITS training hotel, the only criticism the opposition seemed to have was what it called the destruction of Qala school. It was only a small part of Qala school that had been demolished. That had happened in accordance with permits.

The Bill was given a second reading. It started being debated in committee later yesterday.