It seems that most people agree that investing in education is the key to our future prosperity. But many wonder whether we are doing the right things to achieve educational excellence.

In the last few weeks there was no shortage of news coming from the Minister of Education.

Some of the older schools need a complete facelift as maintenance work may not have been sufficient in the past few years. The new minister also reported a case of alleged malpractice in the examination process adopted a few months ago to promote civil servants.

But the most disturbing comments about our dysfunctional educational system were made by Carmel Borg, a former dean of the Faculty of Education. Prof. Borg told Times of Malta: “We’re living an illusion... Our educational system is sick.”

Malta’s low scoring in international studies that aim to gauge achievement levels of primary school pupils is attributed to failures in an educational system that promotes “lower order cognitive skills –memory work and regurgitation” rather than “higher order cognitive skills, including problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, enquiry-based learning and reasoning”.

Prof. Borg sees the solution in a radical change in the way we teach in our schools. He laments that the lack of competence in the use of the English language is partly to blame for the failure of Maltese students to achieve more in our educational system but adds that this is not the only problem that is promoting educational underachievement.

There are many who argue that “the negative repercussions of the current educational system” are not merely “the democratic deficit it produces”. The more serious repercussions are not just philosophical but very concrete economic ones. One of the most important objectives of any educational system is the ability to prepare students for the workplace. Many would agree that American educator Francis Keppel was quite right when he said that “education is too important to be left to educators”. But Winston Churchill was equally correct to state that “education is too important to be left to politicians”.

During the last election campaign, we saw the political leaders committing themselves to continued investment in education. Their promises were often articulated in tangible pledges to build more schools, give free tablets to students and keep paying stipends to those following tertiary level courses. The question is: will this deliver educational excellence?

One worrying silence in this important debate on the state of health of the educational system is that of employers. From time to time we hear some employers complaining that the young graduates they recruit are often not prepared well enough for the real world of work. Prof. Borg is right in pointing out that the educational system does not teach students the skills of problem solving or creative thinking, which is so important in most modern industries.

However, there are other weaknesses in the educational system. Teachers will tell you how most schools have no effective code of discipline. Similarly, academic standards are often diluted to artificially improve students’ achievement levels. This may please politicians but corrupts the system by deceiving students on their real abilities that will determine their future job prospects.

It is also a sad reality that, in this country, we have an underclass of students who come from deprived social environments where parents do not feel any real commitment or ambition to educate their children to the highest possible level.

The educational system in this country is afflicted by various illnesses and requires urgent treatment.