Illiterates appreciate second chance to improve skills

The overall rate of illiteracy in Malta in 2005 stood at 7.2 per cent, including school-leavers and age-groups all the way up to over 90 years.

Answering a parliamentary question by Anthony Agius Decelis (PL), Education Minister Dolores Cristina laid on the Table of the House a list which showed that illiterates between the age of 10 and 19 was 1.7 per cent; 20-29: 2.4 per cent; 30-29: 3.5 per cent; 40-49: 6.8 per cent; 50-59: 9.3 per cent; 60-69: 11.1 per cent; 70-79:19.3 per cent; 80-89: 24.6 per cent; and 90 29.5 per cent.

Answering opposition MPs’ supplementary questions, she said the term “illiterate” described individuals who declared they could not write a complete sentence in Maltese or English. It was not a term used only locally.

It was becoming ever more evident that people in their early 20s and older were becoming increasingly appreciative of new opportunities to enhance their basic skills as they had not done at school. There was always substantial interest by many age-groups in lifelong learning courses, and only recently the ETC had awarded recognised certification to 230 graduates who had successfully enhanced their basic skills.

Not all of them had taken the courses in order to find jobs. There had been mothers who wanted to better help their children with their homework, as well as others who wanted to run their businesses better and youths who had been unsuccessful in academia but realised the importance of doing something about it.

Minister Cristina said the 7.2 per cent did not apply only to school-leavers, as Labour MP Noel Farrugia seemed to understand, but to all ages. The figures had come out of the 2005 census, and there had been substantial progress since then.

The ETC put forward the chances and sought to channel people to adequate opportunities, but the response depended exclusively on an individual’s perception of the importance of improving his or her competences.