Last year Malta participated for the second time in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), an international survey of the reading achievement of 10-year-olds that included 50 countries. The first time was in 2011, when pupils were assessed for their literacy proficiency in both English and Maltese.

This time round, the government decided to participate only in the Maltese proficiency test. The reason for this could well have been that the 2011 results were very worrying, with Malta coming 35th overall of 45 participating countries. So the government may have decided to put its best foot forward and only concentrate on the language with the majority of native speakers.

This strategy did not work. The 2016 results are worse, with Malta coming in 40th of 50 countries, the worst of the participating European countries, and with the overall score for Maltese reading proficiency marginally lower than in 2011. Independent schools scored significantly lower than State schools, who in their turn fared worse than Church schools.

No wonder the Education Minister, Evarist Bartolo, did not headline the publication of the 2016 PIRLS results as he had for the 2011 set.

In 2013 he used the PIRLS results as a springboard for the setting up of a new National Literacy Agency.

But the latest results have effectively been buried deep within the ministry website. Apart from responding to questions from journalists, the government has not issued a comprehensive response and proposed a way forward.

Participating governments receive the PIRLS results well in advance so as not to be caught off guard. They typically prepare themselves by offering an articulated analysis of the results and proposing policies and initiatives to address the shortcomings.

But minister Bartolo is uncharacteristically silent. So much for public accountability and transparency.

It is almost as if the government hoped that these results would slip under the radar of public consciousness, which is currently engrossed with the spectacle of a government, barely out of an emphatic electoral victory, that has become the butt of international scorn and is struggling to avoid pariah status.

It is in itself worrying that the disastrous PIRLS results have caused hardly a ripple in Malta. The Opposition, both parts of it, has yet to comment. The silence of the Faculty of Education – bar one or two individual academics – and of the Independent Schools Association is deafening. There is no discernible public wave of parental concern or civil society outrage. Perhaps this is yet another symptom of the current dislocation of Maltese society.

The government is in denial. Its reaction to the PIRLS results has been much less than satisfactory, essentially blaming the test and saying it was not sufficiently suited for Malta’s particular realities such as its size and bilingual mix. Yet if these realities were such a determining factor, how does the government explain Malta’s improvement in the PISA 2015 results, which assessed performance in 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics and science in 72 countries and economies? Malta was one of the few countries which increased the share of top-performing students in reading. 

One would think the government’s first act would be to throw a spotlight on the National Literacy Strategy, which was intended to improve the 2011 PIRLS results, to see whether its policy priorities need to be revised. Since 2013 it has invested heavily in reading resources and initiatives both in schools and communities, in line with the recommendations of PIRLS 2011.

But, crucially, it has ignored key recommendations by the EU’s High Level Group in 2012 on the most effective in-class literacy strategies. These featured prominently in the review by the pre-2013 administration of Malta’s first Literacy Strategy issued in 2009.

The UK government is crediting its significant improvement in PIRLS 2016 on just these in-class strategies, and no one can say that the UK does not have a multilingual, multiethnic educational reality.

PIRLS 2016 is an urgent wake-up call. The government needs to focus on the quality of pre-service and continuous professional teacher training in literacy. It needs to provide clear guidance and support to schools on the literacy strategies that work best.

Malta urgently needs to improve the literacy skills of all its students, since this is a key gateway for lifelong learning and the advancement of society.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial

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