Labour and education never lived in the same street.
Each time it was in government it never placed education as a priority. Worse, it dismantled most of what had been built previously.
State schools in the 1970s and 1980s were a sham. Examinations were removed and, as a result, the standards plummeted. Parents who wanted to educate their children properly had to resort to personal sacrifices to send them to Church schools. Seeing this, the Labour government embarked on a harsh battle against them.
They were first impeded from raising their fees to cover their growing expenses, and later had to face the government’s crusade to close them down – the “jew b’xejn jew xejn” Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici battle-cry still rings in my ears. It was only because of the stiff resistance by the parents at the time that Labour finally gave in.
Those years were also a time when the University’s doors were open to only a few hundred students, courses were limited to a handful and not all opened every year. Malta experienced a huge brain-drain as university professors left the island to seek better pastures. The Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology was closed too. A nine-week strike ordered by the Malta Union of Teachers in 1984 was the climax of an industrial dispute that went on for years.
In a nutshell, the education sector was at its lowest point in Maltese political history.
The Nationalist Party won the election in 1987 and quickly embarked on plans to restore confidence in the state education system. It did this while at the same time supporting the sterling work carried out in Church schools and encouraging the opening of independent schools. The University opened its doors to everyone with the qualifications to join, and it has continued to grow year after year. MCAST was reopened, offering alternatives to our younger generation and, like the university, it continues to grow year after year.
The Labour Party is now back in power and it took little time to show us its true colours in the education sector.
It’s idea to lower the standards needed for universities to be licensed is one of the ways with which it is hitting out. Just as much as the planned repeater class it envisaged in 2008 would have been a detriment to the education system, the inferior standards planned to be introduced by Labour mean a direct blow to the quality of tertiary education provided. It is a direct attack on the system that has been painstakingly built over the years to produce better qualified people.
The lowering of the standards, inexplicably supported by people who should know better, will mean a less competitive Malta.
The maxim that anything goes under Labour has taken on a new meaning.
The worst is probably yet to come. I would not be surprised if, once the government found no qualms to reduce university standards, it will soon plan to lower the standards in other sectors of our education system.