A record number of students applied to join Mcast and the university this year, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said this evening.

Speaking during a dialogue meeting on the Granaries in Floriana, held as part of Independence Day activities, he asked whether parents would risk what was most precious to them.

The Nationalist Party, he said, had always been the party of choice and education.

It had never closed a school or educational institution and never removed stipends. It never meddled with education. The opposition was unreliable and could not be believed because it was always changing its position.

Dr Gonzi said that the government spent €6,000 on each student each year. So if one was a student for 20 years, the government would spend on him the equivalent of a house.

He said that the number of students continuing with their education after secondary school had reached 83 per cent.

This improvement came about through gradual and careful changes, and not through meddling with the system.

He noted that few were the countries that had the level of educational support, such as through learning support assistants, that Malta had. The PN, he said, had never been afraid to introduce the necessary changes, it had never been afraid to compete,

“Our greatness isn’t measured by the size of our island but by the size of our ideas,” Dr Gonzi said.