The political parties contesting Saturday’s general election have stressed the importance of education and promised to continue to give it maximum attention. That is a welcome promise. Well-structured education programmes are a must, both from the social and the economic aspects.

Education as an investment has to be linked to the needs of the economy

From the social standpoint, looking at education as a consumption function, the wider it is spread, the better.

We boast a well-educated society. Even so, there are gaps which need to be filled. Malta is fortunate that the bulk of her people are familiar with the English language. Such familiarity, however, has bred contempt.

There are too many people who speak an agonising sort of English.

That does not apply simply to those who are derided for aping English customs, but speak a mixed dialogue skipping from English into Maltese and back. The practice is more widespread. It is reflected also in written English. This needs to be tackled, starting with the teaching profession. In the knowing sense, we still have one in 10 of our people who are illiterate.

There will always be some illiteracy, but 10 per cent is too high. New programmes of teaching are required, starting from childhood. At the other end of the scale, there is not enough appreciation of culture, not even among those sectors where the level of education is good. A revamped approach to education, mobilising an improved teaching profession as its mainstay, should address these gaps, plus others which may be identified, such as inadequate time spent on reading for the sake of it by the young and older people alike.

Education for consumption purposes is challenging enough and should reach beyond pride that a good number of individuals, including senior citizens, seek further education as an end in itself, not as an investment. But education is investment, the most important a country can make. Education as an investment has to be linked to the needs of the economy, which have to be projected and adjusted on an ongoing basis. The emphasis has to be on quality, not just on quantity.

It is not enough to stress that there are now more students attending University than ever before, and that the Mcast too is bursting at the seams. The quality of the output has to be audited to determine whether it offers a notional adequate return on the resources invested. Nor is it enough to say that we have secondary education for all.

I do not know what liaison exists between our economic forecasters and the education sector. For instance, there is loose talk about 20,000 jobs having been created in the last five years, and a promise of a further 25,000 jobs to be set out should the governing party win another term. There is controversy over the 20,000 figure, which is not supported by the aggregates of the gainfully occupied population over the period in question.

Ignoring that controversy, no details have been given where these 20,000 jobs were created. What of the future? To say that 25,000 jobs will be created without aligning that to economic forecasts of the changes that will be taking place in the economy over time, is meaningless. That is why I stress that economic forecasters must be forthcoming with their projections.

So far the debate about employment has refused to move forward, at least beyond the quantitative promises. That is no way to conduct public policy. It simply confirms the probability that no policy has been drawn up.

Emphasis on education also has to be related to the other end of the gainfully occupied – the rest of the working population represented by the registered unemployed.

The Prime Minister did not respond to the Opposition leader’s warning that unemployment has risen steadily over the past 11 months. The rise is of concern and deserves much more attention. Of more concern is the composition of the registered unemployed. Too large a proportion is made up of individuals with low skills or none at all. They are also the sector that has been registering for the longest periods.

That is a huge problem because it means that, even ignoring the upward trend in unemployment, there is a lump of unemployed which threatens to become permanent. One is talking about people, here, not just statistics.

This leads to another conclusion regarding manpower planning and all that has to go into it. Education has to be reviewed from the early years to the tertiary level for quality and relevance to the needs of the economy. It has also to be reviewed in relation to the unemployed.

The unemployed, above all, require retraining to fit into identified manpower needs. But their composition has to guide the education authorities to see where they missed out. Tracer studies showing those who did not continue their education should serve a purpose. That purpose should be to link education to those who are unemployed because they failed to make the grade required by the economy today.

Learning from today’s gaps should serve to reduce them tomorrow. The commitment to education should be not just another electoral promise. It should be an earnest pledge to take this paramount sector more seriously. Much has been done. Much more requires to be done.