Ivan Camilleri
Malta failing miserably on childcare facilities - EU report
Malta is one of the worst performers in the EU when it comes to the provision of childcare facilities for pre-school aged children, according to a new report published by the European Commission.
This is probably one of the main reasons why Malta has the highest percentage in Europe of women staying at home instead of participating fully in the labour market.
Malta ranks 25th out of the 27 EU member states in the report that measures the progress made by member states to provide childcare facilities to pre-school children.
Only eight per cent of children under three were provided with public or private childcare facilities in 2006, the report says. The EU average stood at 26 per cent and only Poland and the Czech Republic performed worse than Malta.
Malta also ranked at the bottom of the table when it comes to childcare services for children aged three to mandatory school age.
Despite the fact that in 2006, a total of 57 per cent of children in this age category were attending some form of childcare facility, which also includes pre-grade school, only Poland and Lithuania performed worse than Malta in the EU. In this age group, the EU's average is much higher and stands at 84 per cent.
Back in 2002, the EU had set targets to be reached by each member state by 2010. These include the provision of child-minding facilities for at least 33 per cent of children aged up to three, and 90 per cent for children from three years to mandatory school age.
Malta has a great deal of work to do if it is to reach these targets in just two years time.
"We think that Malta has to pull its socks up and start taking these targets seriously," a Commission official told The Sunday Times.
"It is very evident that the lack of services being provided in Malta is keeping many mothers at home and this is a waste of resources. If Malta wants to increase its productivity, more females need to participate in the active labour market."
Malta has by far the lowest percentage of women working in the EU. According to the latest Eurostat figures, only 37 per cent of Maltese women between 16 and 64 had a full-time or part time job by the middle of this year. The others are all inactive taking care of the family. The average participation of women in the labour market in the EU in mid-2008 stood at 58.3 per cent.
On the other hand, Malta is faring well when it comes to male employment which at 74.2 per cent is two percentage points better than the EU average. The imbalance between male and female employment in Malta is the widest in the EU.
The EU's report on childcare facilities shows that Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Spain have the best facilities in the EU for the lower age-group (up to three years old) and have already surpassed the EU objective of a 33 per cent coverage rate.
Regarding children between three and the mandatory school age, eight member states including Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany have surpassed the set objective of a 90 per cent coverage rate.
EU Employment Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said that adequate and accessible childcare is crucial to allow parents to work, to strengthen gender equality and to reinforce social inclusion.
"Childcare is also a vital ingredient in facing up to demographic ageing: without proper support services, parents are less likely to have children. National governments need to address the challenge and the EU will support their efforts with €0.5bn of EU funding up until 2013 to help develop childcare facilities."
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V Farrugia
Oct 6th 2008, 20:21
I have to agree with those correspondents who blamed school hours for the dearth of working mothers. Schools should operate during normal business hours, for the same amount of weeks as regular workers, instead of only 9 months a year!
If our children were to have 40-hour school weeks for 48 weeks a year, there will be far less stress in keeping up with their vast syllabus. The school day can be very comfortably divided into 2: the first 4 hours could be dedicated to academic subjects, while the last 4 hours could be dedicated to performing , visual arts, sports and all those subjects that can't currently be taught at school for lack of time.
This system will leave no losers, just winners.
M Ellul
Oct 6th 2008, 10:16
As a working mother I can say that childcare facilities for mothers of babies, toddlers and preschoolers is very good considering the many limitations that our country has. However the situation changes once children are in the older age groups. The key problem stems from the existent school hours which are not conducive to allow more mothers to pursue fulfilling careers. After school programmes are the next step forward. This is the case in various EU countries where children are then offered various activities or programmes that complement the academic curriculum. With the current childhood obesity levels prevailing in our country it would be a great idea to use the afternoon slot in schools to engage children into sports and physical activity.
A Camilleri
Oct 6th 2008, 09:31
@ Nicky Cassar.
I completely agree with your statement. I am in the exact situation as you. These souls will NEVER understand what childcare really entails.
Paul Borg
Oct 6th 2008, 04:03
"This is probably one of the main reasons why Malta has the highest percentage in Europe of women staying at home instead of participating fully in the labour market." What a lot of codswallop!!! I can just as equally claim that Maltese mothers (and other traditional Catholic mothers in Poland and Lithuania) place the value of mothering their young pre-school children so far ahead of the idea of the working mother who surrenders the upbringing of their children to strangers, that there is no high demand for childcare facilities. The thesis of this report by the EU Commissars is the "socially engineered" model of the "working mother" being valued more by society for being an "economic asset" rather than for her motherhood. Where this has been adopted and is popular, numerous reports by world renowned social researches, institutions government, NGO's etc. have established that the majority of such "working mothers " are guilt ridden because of concerns that they are not doing the "right thing" by their children who they perceive should be their primary concern. This is to be expected as it is the "natural drive">
m farrugia
Oct 5th 2008, 21:27
The real problem for mothers not working is not the lack of child care centres. There are enough child care centres around now. School hours, some schools finish at 1.30pm! is one of the big problems. The other big problem is the lack of understanding and cooperation from employers. Unfortunatley most bosses are men and do not seem to understand how healthy a good work life balance is both in terms of family life as well as production levels at work. They procastinate not to allow reduced and flexible hours and teleworking even when a lot of back office work makes this possible, losing a lot of experienced female workers and resources on the way.
Nicky Cassar
Oct 5th 2008, 19:52
I work abroad, I have one child and another on the way. One of the reasons why I do not wish to return to Malta even though there are reasons why I would want to go back, is that I would have problems keeping up with a challenging career being a mother. The lack of childcare facilities is one of the causes of the glass ceiling for women in the labour market in Malta. In most European cities, one can avail of childcare, even at a very low cost, from the age of 3 months. Schools normally provide childcare facilities until 6pm or 6.30pm and children are kept occupied with sports, music, dancing and other lessons, for which Maltese mothers would be driving their kids around the island.
P. Camilleri
Oct 5th 2008, 19:01
I really can't understand were these EU professors get the data from....In Malta there is already a surplus of child care centres and most of the licensed centres are up to EU standard.....We need much more female participation in our workforce to sustain the already existing centres.......
To you EU profs, please do the math properly before releasing sweeping statements like these.....
l Galea
Oct 5th 2008, 17:36
@Ewout Wierda
"but also why child care in Malta is actually extremely cheap compared to North-West Europe"
So are our wages and salaries Ewout.
Maybe in your country child care is not so cheap and wages are higher, but then you still choose to leave your country and came to live in Malta.
Coming to women, why is there so much obsession for forcing women to go out to work if they don't feel they want to do so?
C. Micallef
Oct 5th 2008, 13:27
SCHOOLS IMPEDE MOTHERS FROM WORKING
If you want more mothers to return work, be brave: circulate a national survey and see that most mothers reply that if schools had to finish at 3.30pm and if school holidays were to be reduced, then they would return back to work. Why not see how schools operate in UK and Italy? We one Europe now. Please don't mention salaries. Low salaries relative to EU countries is not an issue of only teachers.
Ewout Wierda
Oct 5th 2008, 12:08
I could be wrong but I have the impression that quite a lot of people think that sending children below 3 years old to child care is a failure of motherhood. Perhaps that is one reason why the participation of women in the labour market is low, but also why child care in Malta is actually extremely cheap compared to North-West Europe. To make the circle round, the low cost of child care seems to exist in spite of a shortage of facilities and does not seem to create much growth in the percentage of women working, so the underlying cause is probably not a matter of economics.
A Cutajar
Oct 5th 2008, 11:09
Bla bla bla: just talk, voluminous reports and delayed action. The conclusions emerging from the Commission's report are missing the wood for the trees!
Forget child care centres owned by private entities. These are simply becoming too expensive in this day and age even with the two parents working full time. Besides, pre-school child care centres are responsible for a wide range of health-related problems besides increasing the financial problems for young parents already overburdened by increasing home loan expenses and the overall cost of living.
And the situation is not improving with regards to similar centres provided by employers (heqq, corporate expenditure has to be contained!).
The only solution is to speed up the process whereby the widest section of working mothers are offered teleworking opportunities. Teleworking absorbs costs related with recreating a child-friendly environment associated with child-care centres. Commuting (with its associated traffic pollution) is also eliminated and an effective balance is reached between family duties and career aspirations as more women can decide to continue working once the maternity leave period is exhausted.
Only in this way can parents learn to adopt stricter time management rules whilst following their offspring's progress on a DAILY basis.