Labour leader Alfred Sant has not explained how the reception class, a year between kinder and primary education, did not mean that all five-year olds would repeat a year, whether or not they needed to, the Education Ministry said.

The government was implementing programmes to give the best possible opportunity to all children to start school according to their potential. Labour wanted to put children on the same scale instead of having a system of teaching according to children’s abilities.

It was not true, the ministry said, that the country had fallen back in education when compared to EU countries, as Dr Sant had claimed, not for the first time. Nor was it true that Malta had the lowest rates of literacy among young people ending secondary education. These were two claims made up by the Labour Party, which it has been repeating, for them perhaps to be believed.

The ministry said it had, on various occasions, published statistics to show that what the Labour leader was saying was untrue, and that indeed Malta was making rapid progress. It was shameful that the Opposition Leader could not admit he was in the wrong and was insisting on misinformation and twisting facts.