A high standard of national education is one of the keys – perhaps the key – to Malta’s future success as a modern society. It is the prime medium for achieving sustainable economic growth and personal human development. Despite the commendably high government investment in education under successive administrations, the education system has failed too many students and has not led to the corresponding improvements in standards one should expect.
Evarist Bartolo, a leading player in the education field both from the Opposition benches and more so now as Minister for Education, has published a consultation document on reforms in the Education Act. Its purpose is not only to see that the law is kept up to date to reflect the new challenges in the modern world but also to ensure it continues to provide the operational structures needed to address any deficiencies in the educational systems which it establishes and regulates.
The consultative document rightly stresses the importance of ensuring that all the legal principles and structures required to implement the Malta Education Strategy for the next 10 years are in place. Successful implementation of this strategy, which will take Malta’s children up to 2024, includes a number of crucial objectives: improving the quality and effectiveness of Malta’s education; providing a fairer and more inclusive educational system; increasing the level of students’ achievements across all levels and ensuring a smooth transition from early childhood to primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education.
The consultative document makes the connection for the need for the legislative tools that underpin the educational strategy to be in lock-step together. Thus, it addresses issues such as the role and functions of the education central authorities, including the directorates of education and other entities and commissions established by law, the rights, responsibilities and obligations of parents in the provision of education to their children, the reduction of early school-leavers and many others.
The document covers a wide field and contains a number of proposals that demand attention. The formation of a General Education Commission, similar in purpose and concept to the National Commission for Further and Higher Education, is a step in the right direction. This will be responsible, inter alia, for ensuring that parents wishing to “home-school” their children are properly qualified to do so. The proposed General Education Commission will also be responsible for vetting the process and issue a warrant allowing qualified parents to undertake home-schooling provided they can show justification for doing so (for example, on grounds of poor health or because parents are only temporarily working or residing on the island).
The regulation of kindergarten assistants and learning support assistants by licensing them and integrating them into an education council as well as granting the civil courts the power to take children away from parents if they refuse to send them to school are necessary steps forward to close current legal loopholes and ensure a properly regulated regime in areas where there may have been concerns. The overriding objective of the consultation exercise is to ensure that the Education Act will continue to be capable of delivering and sustaining an educational policy for Malta and Gozo for the years ahead.
The vital issue is to ensure an excellent standard of education for all, which will equip all students, from kindergarten to higher and further education level, to live successfully in a fast-moving, competitive, inclusive and multicultural society. Its thrust and direction appear to be on the right lines.