A 16-year-old girl comes to my surgery. She needs help to find a job. She cannot read and write. This after having spent 13 years, out of her 16, at school. I suggest that she starts attending my adult and adolescent literacy classes conducted specifically for those left by the wayside of our educational system and others who did not have the opportunity to learn when they were younger.
The tireless teachers who give the lessons on a voluntary basis do their utmost to give the students a second chance in life. She comes and does well. I learn that she can paint and so we got her in touch with the national school of art. She is now determined to get her art O level.
As she is becoming confident with writing and reading in English, she is learning more on her own by using the computer.
How is it that nobody saw to this young girl's needs while at school? This is but one example of the many cases I encounter every day in my constituency. Labelled failed students in a failed system, they leave secondary school without even the most basic of skills.
A recent report in a newspaper described junior lyceum entrance exam results as "shocking", especially those of Cospicua, where none of the 17 students who sat for the exam passed (and 15 other students who were eligible did not even sit for the exam), and Xgħajra, where only one student out of the seven who sat for the exam passed.
As a parliamentarian working also in areas where these dismal results have been obtained, it is obvious that I am in touch with this problem every day.
Some of these students pursue their secondary education only because it is compulsory and do not make much progress once they have been labelled as failures by the system. They get no encouragement and help from home either.
What I do on a personal initiative and the results obtained are but a drop in the ocean of illiteracy.
The government should have done much more on this problem in 20 years. It was reported in this newspaper last week that the principal of St Margaret College realised that the Cospicua state primary school "faced particular problems that demanded particular solutions". Good morning to you too, Mr Principal.
When one sees how the government has failed to seriously address this problem, are we to be surprised that, when compared to other European Union states, we are at the top of the list when it comes to students not pursuing their studies after finishing compulsory secondary education? Not at all. Once it is no longer compulsory for them to go to school, many start seeking jobs. These jobs are often used as a stop-gap by young girls to earn some money before they "start a family".
What surprises me is the government's nonchalant attitude about the issue. For instance, the Prime Minister was recently happy to announce in a speech he gave at a conference (Family-Friendly Measures - A Balance Between Interests, Rhetoric And Reality) that "Many people say that we have very low female participation in work, but in the 15-24 age bracket we have 48 per cent participation when compared with the 40 per cent of the EU average."
In fact, we have the highest rate of young women working in all of the European Union and the participation of women in the labour market within that age cohort was never a problem. And it's not that "many people say that we have a very low female participation in work"; it is a fact that we are at the bottom of the EU statistics list when it comes to the participation of women in the labour market in general because women in the older age cohort often have no choice but to stop working when they find they cannot balance their family and job responsibilities.
No wonder we are making no headway in either field. We should be encouraging young girls and women to continue with their studies and not to enter the labour market in their teens and early 20s. Where it matters then, where there are women with more expertise and more experience, in their late 20s, early 30s and older, they are exiting the labour market because of the lack of a support system that helps them deal with their work and family duties.
It is a shame that Malta continues to be at the top of the list when it comes to negative data, such as that where we have the highest rate of students who opt out of education at 16 years of age, and at the bottom of the list where it concerns the positive aspect of women's participation in the labour market.
The author is a sociologist and a Labour member of Parliament.