Malta’s tertiary education ranking in the World Economic Forum’s report on global competitiveness was “worse news than the Moody’s report” released a day earlier, according to Labour MP Owen Bonnici.

Dr Bonnici, the party spokesman for higher education, research and culture, said Malta had ranked low – at 72 among 142 countries – in the tertiary education list.

He noted that the island ranked 63rd in the report in terms of innovation and its rate of post-secondary school completion was at the bottom of the EU at 52.1 per cent, which was less than the 78.3 EU average and the 85 per cent benchmark.

It was unacceptable that the data for absenteeism at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology was not available, he added, citing it as an important source of information on which to build policy.

Similarly,educationspokesman Evarist Bartolo asked whether the results of the national benchmark examinations would be made public in the same way as the Junior Lyceum results were.

Mr Bartolo noted that Malta spent more than the EU average of five per cent of the GDP on education but, quoting a report called How The World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better, he said Malta’s education system was still rated as “fair” when compared to that of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which were listed as “good” by spending the same proportion of money.

Asked what the party thought should be done, Mr Bartolo said the Labour Party would be making its recommendations when the discussion on the draft national curriculum framework got underway.

Among the issues he said should be addressed were the importance that science was given in primary school and specific guidelines on the language of instruction.

He said that placing due importance on English would not in any way decrease the value of Maltese as a language and called for proper language training to be given to teachers so they would express themselves well in English.