Minister, don’t leave these kids alone

Malta’s greatest resource is its people. Education, therefore, is one of the greatest possible investments.

The Minister for the Economy stated that this budget was not going to be about the economy simply expanding, but it was going to develop it. I was therefore looking forward to a substantial investment in education, especially coming out of the pandemic. Malta has ranked poorly in the Programme for International Students Assessments (PISA), and in spite of improvements, still has a long way to go. This is evidenced by the recent poor performance of students in the SEC exams, with hundreds failing basic subjects such as maths, Maltese and English. Unfortunately, this budget hardly addressed Education at all.

The minister only spared a paragraph for Education in which we were reassured that mentoring for newly qualified teachers will continue. In truth it is already being done for free by educators, and if one is lucky, one gets 2 lessons less in the timetable by teaching in a secondary school. Furthermore, the budget offers each headmistress and headmaster 10,000 euros to help those students with financial difficulty. Unfortunately, the money does not differentiate between student population and catchment areas, and it is only for state schools. This is where the reference to education stops.

One wonders if anyone in the field was truly consulted, and which policymakers dreamed up these impracticalities. The biggest issue facing the sector is the lack of teachers, and this has been completely ignored. The classrooms are empty as children are left without teachers, and nobody is bothering to come up with a solution. Instead, feet are dragged ad aeternum. Is it so difficult to open up the PGCE course? Is it such a hassle to shorten the course to become a teacher from five years to three? Is a Master’s degree truly necessary to teach at primary and secondary levels? The reward for all that study is a measly €1,300 awaiting a graduate, along with a ton of responsibility, paperwork and people faulting from the outside rather than improving the situation.

Without genuine investments in our education system, we are left with failing students and crumbling intellectual infrastructure. How are we to develop the economy if the level of education does not qualify students to tackle the problems of tomorrow? We require professionals like teachers, nurses and doctors, all desperately needed; otherwise we are promoting a vicious cycle, fostering a dependence on imported, exploited labour for all the wrong reasons. Our education system is expensive, but not effective, and if we are going to use it to produce a shortage rather than an abundance of skills then clearly something is wrong. Are these the bricks and mortar with which we are developing the economy? Oh yeah, it seems like it!