As thousands of students, ranging from toddlers to undergraduates, prepare to return to their respective educational institutions in less than a week's time, the question of the adequacy of our educational system needs to be revisited.
The recent report by the IMF on Malta concludes with a very sobering recommendation to the government: "Ensuring the necessary flow of qualified human capital will require further improvement in educational attainment and higher female labour market participation."
It is a fact that one of the areas in which we are underperforming, when compared to other EU countries, is in the level of educational attainment of our young people. With one of the worst records for students leaving school without formal qualifications or a sufficient level of skills, we clearly need to put education back on the national political agenda.
The debate on our educational system should not stop at this particular benchmark of the adequacy of our teaching regime. We also need to examine whether we are attracting sufficient students to study the subjects that a modern economy demands: information and communications technology, engineering and sciences. Unless we have sufficient numbers of young people qualifying in these areas we will find it difficult to attract direct foreign investment in businesses that will create tomorrow's jobs.
Another area that we need to scrutinise more deeply relates to the skills we are teaching to our students. Team working, problem solving, creativity and entrepreneurship are among the skills that today's workers need to optimise their employment potential. There will always be demand for low skills jobs but these will be increasingly fewer in number and will not help to improve the quality of life of those that eventually get them. We need to narrow the gap of our standard of living with the more advanced EU countries. We can only realise this ambition in a relatively short time if and when we achieve above average growth through modern economic activities based on the high skills of the workforce.
Education rarely stimulates the kind of passionate political debate that we are used to hearing regarding other subjects. But the quality of our educational system and the strategy that will determine its effectiveness in stimulating economic growth and jobs should be at the very top of our political agenda.
The IMF report links the issue of "improvement in educational attainment" with that of "higher female labour market participation". Many argue, with some justification, that our low female labour market participation is partly a result of the culture of the past several decades that considered further education for females as irrelevant. The consequence of this is that females in certain age brackets today find it difficult to find suitable work for their skills level.
As many of our competitors move out of recession, they are increasingly reviewing their economic strategies to become more competitive and succeed in an international market that promises to be tougher than ever. Many are not surprisingly honing their competitive advantages by investing more in education.
It may take as long as a decade to reap the first benefits of educational reform and this may seem like too long a period for politicians. But the country must put renewed focus on reform if it is to overcome the present weaknesses in its educational system and pave the way for stronger economic growth and better jobs for our young people in the future.