Almost 19 years ago, I was education minister at a time when a number of English teaching school operators came forward to say how worried they were that new operators would be opening low-quality schools that wouldn’t qualify as serious institutions, thus undermining the English teaching sector.

Without hesitation I took action. We started a process that led to English learning schools in Malta becoming accredited.

This was a first in Europe and rarely seen anywhere in the world – English teaching schools had to be properly accredited with proper standards maintained.

The seeds we planted so long ago are bearing fruit today. Malta is a prime destination for learning the English language, with many institutions boasting a high calibre educational standard, well above minimum requirements.

In the coming weeks we will be strengthening the quality assurance of these schools to further raise the bar in this sector.

We usually associate this industry with youths learning English in the holidays, but nowadays it’s a large-scale industry with many foreign adults coming to Malta and learning taking place all year round. To ensure that all our standards in the English language are truly world-class we have signed an agreement in the past few days with Cambridge English, from the University of Cambridge.

We have built a good reputation in this sector and standards have been strengthened and maintained.

Last year a total of 77,000 students came to Malta to learn English and this sector now provides a direct income for hundreds of people, with thousands more benefiting indirectly.

Before the election in 2013, we explained our vision for the tertiary sector. Like most of our plans, it was bold and ambitious.

We stated in our manifesto that the University of Malta would be given the necessary investment to grow, innovate and research.

We changed the legal notice to allow education space that is in synch with many countries

This statement was put to the test on my first day as Education Minister when we were told by the University of Malta that unless a €4.5 million injection were forthcoming immediately, the University would be unable to continue operating. Working with the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister I made sure that these sizeable financial gaps were dealt with and the University continued its operations.

What we also did, without triumphalism, was raise the University’s budget from €52 million in 2013 to more than €70 million in last November’s Budget. Last year, we also signed a collective agreement that will boost the University’s position. Am I happy with the research budget of the University over the past 10 years?

No, of course not, but we’re making inroads, and just a few weeks ago we launched the Post-Doctoral Scholarship Programme, a modest first, which will mean PhD students can focus on research full-time.

These are noteworthy achievements never seen before. Unlike the empty talk of others, our actions speak louder than our words. And sometimes our own words obfuscate our own deeds.

Our choice for the electoral manifesto was to either keep the status quo and let other countries speed past us, or move ahead with the times and understand the dynamics of higher education globally. We want to attract to Malta and Gozo a few thousand of the 4.5 million students studying in overseas campuses. But that does not mean we are going to allow any investor to buy a university licence to operate from our islands. Such a licence will only be granted after the rigorous process undertaken by the National Commission for Further and Higher Education.

We changed the legal notice not to accommodate anyone but to allow an educational space that is in synch with what is happening in many different countries. Anyone familiar with what is happening in education in countries such as Germany will know that the tertiary sector is no longer a strictly academic remit.

World-class technical schools in Germany’s higher education sector are the engine behind the country’s stratospheric economic results.

These institutions often cater for degrees and masters level only and are very focused – be it technological, engineering or medical.

These institutions often offer a small number of programmes, which are of a very high quality and, as the name implies, are quite technical.

An example closer to home is the arrival in Gozo of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

They will offer a small selection of educational courses, but can anyone please tell me how they’re diminishing the quality of education by offering a small number of programmes?

Quality over quantity is what Legal Notice 150/2015 is about, and in no way, shape or form are we endangering the reputation or standards of education in our country by having a lower minimum number of programmes needed to operate.

You may be surprised to learn that last October we finally regulated the minimum entry requirements, the minimum qualification requirements for tutors and lecturers, the minimum course requirements, the minimum assessment requirements or the quality assurance requirements for an educational institution to operate in Malta.

We have introduced the changes above because we believe in standards. Through all this we are not only maintaining these high standards but we have strengthened them with stricter rules. Moreover, we would never allow anyone, no matter how big their bank balance is, to buy an educational licence in Malta or to undermine the highly-respected National Commission for Further and Higher Education.

What a contrast this is with the standards of the previous administration, which allowed an operator (and I have repeatedly written about this over the years) to defraud Maltese students of thousands of euros by selling them unaccredited courses with fictitious degrees offered by bogus universities. At that time no one, not even a single academic, raised a voice to support me.

Evarist Bartolo is Minister for Education and Employment.