During the recent Rabat Girls' Secondary School's prize-giving ceremony at the Archbishop's Seminary auditorium, Tal-Virtù, both Education Minister Dolores Cristina and school headmistress Maria McNamara lamented students' lack of motivation to read.

Minister Cristina said that students' "lack of interest" was very real, adding that the need "to push students to read was going to prove quite a challenge with the distractions the modern world has to offer".

Earlier, Ms McNamara had also stressed the need to undertake structural repairs at the school, which forms part of St Nicholas College. The ceremony also included singing of a few Beatles numbers by the school choir and the performing of the play Nibnu Dinja Aħjar (Building a better world) scripted by Phyllis Cauchi and Edward Gatt.

The play tells the story of two school students who go for the day to Għadira Bay, have a nap and wake up on the banks of the river Nile.

There they engage in a discussion with the Pharoah, Caesar and the Greek poet, Homer, about wars, other disastrous episodes and all the modern technology and progress made.

The moral of the story was that progress is made one step at a time but no amount of progress could eliminate suffering from the human race.