Most of the small economies with the EU seem to agree that the secret to surviving the current economic downturn is to focus more on education. Speaking after the American Chamber of Commerce Independence Day business lunch President Paul Rellis said: "We are clearly going through a period of uncertainly and volatility in markets, but the long-term advantage we have in Ireland is phenomenally well-educated people. But the key, and I can't express it enough, is more focus on education at primary level, secondary level and third level".
There are also abundant other studies that identify educational attainment as the key success factor for a prosperous economy. Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform writing recently in the Financial Times, argues that neither the US liberal economic systems nor the social market economies of many EU countries are the best systems for promoting equality in society.
He quotes the example of Denmark, which is the nation with the lowest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU, as well as the lowest rate of long-term unemployed. Denmark incidentally is one of the smaller EU countries at present going through a recession.
Mr Whyte concludes that the reason that the Nordics, including Denmark, have the most egalitarian outcomes is that they provide the best education. Few would challenge the validity of the statement that the correlation between educational and social and economic outcomes in the EU is striking. So how do we in Malta fit into this reality?
The recently published Eurosat statistics about Malta's performance in education prevent us from relying on the kind of human infrastructure that Ireland can rely on.
Whether we will eventually face a recession or merely an engineered slowdown, the single most important factor that will affect our future economic prospects is our ability to improve the achievement standards of our young people.
I am not convinced that our generally low achievement in the educational field is anything to do with intrinsically bad educational policies. I believe there are cultural and social factors that we are still not tackling vigorously enough.
It is a fact that the students coming from the predominantly working class areas in the south of the island are unfortunately attaining a much lower education.
This leads me to believe that there are social and cultural reasons why families in these areas fail to provide the necessary support for their children to be achievers in the educational field.
This situation needs to be addressed as soon as possible if we really believe in a more egalitarian society where everyone benefits from the educational infrastructure that is costing us so much. We need to dissect the reasons why some of our young people go through the educational system and eventually become among the best graduates in Europe, while others either drop out far too early from the same system or at most struggle to achieve mediocre educational qualifications.
Education is too important to be subjected to political controversy. We need a bipartisan approach to finding the cause behind our low ranking in the league of educational achievement in the EU, and then to prescribe a new strategy to overcome this threat to our future economic and social wellbeing.
I would propose the setting up of a multi-disciplinary technical commission to review our educational system, identify its weaknesses when compared to the best-of-breed systems adopted by successful small states, and then prescribe changes that need to be implemented over a period of time. This commission would need to include, among others, experts in sociology, education, economics and business management to ensure that it addresses this project in the most balanced way.
But most importantly, this commission should have the endorsement of all our political leaders to ensure that when the difficult task of implementing its recommendations begins, there will be the full commitment of everyone to make education the key competitive advantage of our economic strategy.
Even the most educationally advanced nations, like Denmark and Ireland, face a recession from time to time. But their sound educational systems guarantee that such recessions are short-lived and that economic growth is sustainable and not built on freak booms in any particular economic sector.
There are also abundant other studies that identify educational attainment as the key success factor for a prosperous economy. Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform writing recently in the Financial Times, argues that neither the US liberal economic systems nor the social market economies of many EU countries are the best systems for promoting equality in society.
He quotes the example of Denmark, which is the nation with the lowest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU, as well as the lowest rate of long-term unemployed. Denmark incidentally is one of the smaller EU countries at present going through a recession.
Mr Whyte concludes that the reason that the Nordics, including Denmark, have the most egalitarian outcomes is that they provide the best education. Few would challenge the validity of the statement that the correlation between educational and social and economic outcomes in the EU is striking. So how do we in Malta fit into this reality?
The recently published Eurosat statistics about Malta's performance in education prevent us from relying on the kind of human infrastructure that Ireland can rely on.
Whether we will eventually face a recession or merely an engineered slowdown, the single most important factor that will affect our future economic prospects is our ability to improve the achievement standards of our young people.
I am not convinced that our generally low achievement in the educational field is anything to do with intrinsically bad educational policies. I believe there are cultural and social factors that we are still not tackling vigorously enough.
It is a fact that the students coming from the predominantly working class areas in the south of the island are unfortunately attaining a much lower education.
This leads me to believe that there are social and cultural reasons why families in these areas fail to provide the necessary support for their children to be achievers in the educational field.
This situation needs to be addressed as soon as possible if we really believe in a more egalitarian society where everyone benefits from the educational infrastructure that is costing us so much. We need to dissect the reasons why some of our young people go through the educational system and eventually become among the best graduates in Europe, while others either drop out far too early from the same system or at most struggle to achieve mediocre educational qualifications.
Education is too important to be subjected to political controversy. We need a bipartisan approach to finding the cause behind our low ranking in the league of educational achievement in the EU, and then to prescribe a new strategy to overcome this threat to our future economic and social wellbeing.
I would propose the setting up of a multi-disciplinary technical commission to review our educational system, identify its weaknesses when compared to the best-of-breed systems adopted by successful small states, and then prescribe changes that need to be implemented over a period of time. This commission would need to include, among others, experts in sociology, education, economics and business management to ensure that it addresses this project in the most balanced way.
But most importantly, this commission should have the endorsement of all our political leaders to ensure that when the difficult task of implementing its recommendations begins, there will be the full commitment of everyone to make education the key competitive advantage of our economic strategy.
Even the most educationally advanced nations, like Denmark and Ireland, face a recession from time to time. But their sound educational systems guarantee that such recessions are short-lived and that economic growth is sustainable and not built on freak booms in any particular economic sector.