A quarter of the fifth formers who laze around the house or join the black economy instead of studying are simply “not interested”, a report tracing the youths has found.
The study, carried out by the Directorate for Educational Services, found that 333 16-year-olds said they would not be working or continuing their education after having finished their mandatory schooling last May.
A quarter of these, 74, said they could not be bothered doing anything at all and had no drive to study or work.
Last week, Times of Malta revealed that the vanishing students were not applying for social benefits or registering as unemployed, leaving an unexplained black hole in the labour market that has education authorities scratching their heads in search of the ‘lost’ children.
The revelation that many of these students could not be bothered tallies with Education Minister Evarist Bartolo’s belief that many of the teenagers were living idle lives as dependants on their parents.
“Many of these youths will be at home sleeping till around 11am, stuck to their computers living a virtual life,” he said.
Not all the students are disinterested, however. In fact, 40 per cent of the ‘lost’ children said they had fallen out of the school system because they had failed to obtain the necessary grades or had not even sat for their O level examinations. Last year, 14 fifth formers said disability had forced them to abandon their educational pursuits and had proven an insurmountable obstacle to their employment, leaving them stranded at home as dependants against their will.
Eleven students had decided to help their family, either around the house or by joining the family business, and eight left the country, a figure that debunks the belief that many of these were making use of the EU’s open border policy. Nearly all the vanishing students, 93 per cent, had previously attended State schools, with just six per cent having attended Church schools before falling into haplessness.
Nearly all the vanishing students, 93 per cent, had previously attended State schools, with just six per cent having attended Church schools
No privately-schooled students fell through the cracks and, although certain areas had a larger incidence of dropouts, such as Cospicua and the Marsa area, the phenomenon was spread fairly evenly across all localities.
Boys were twice as likely to leave school as girls and they were more likely to enter menial employment. They were also twice as likely to laze around the house or join the black economy.
Nearly a third of all the students who decided to seek employment rather than sit for their O levels opted to work in retail, stacking shelves and working as cashiers, delivery workers or petrol station attendants.
However, just as many are working much harder to make ends meet. Last year alone, 55 fifth formers decided to work as manual labourers on building sites, the majority of them laying bricks.
Four students decided to sell pastizzi for a living and one decided to use his youth to his advantage and became a professional jockey at the Marsa horse races.