“The current curriculum fails so many students,” Malta Union of Teachers President Kevin Bonello told The Malta Independent.

Mr Bonello was responding to questions concerning the latest MATSEC statistics on this year’s matriculation results.

The statistics revealed that roughly 32% of students who sit for their A-level fail to receive their certificate which would enable them to pursue their studies in tertiary education.  This makes up 28.2% of total 4,026 people born in 1998.

“The problem with the current system is that it fails to cater to a large number of students”

The statistics also showed that 40.7% of people born in 1998 actually pursued their A-levels.

Mr Bonello puts this down to larger numbers of students pursuing alternative routes of education through institutions, such as MCAST.

There appears to be an overarching problem with the current curriculum for both A-level and O-level studies with a study conducted by Dr Mario Pace, Resident Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education. Two weeks ago Dr Pace, who spoke with the Malta Independent on Sunday revealed that more than one out of every four students chooses not to sit for any foreign language SEC exam, despite having studied the particular subject for more than five years

30% of the students who sat for ‘O’ Levels in that particular year considered it unnecessary to sit for the exam.

Dr Pace said that it is important to clarify that the term ‘foreign language’ does not refer to either Maltese or English. Italian, French, German and Spanish are the most common tertiary languages taught in Malta.

Dr Pace identified the lack of exposure to languages as one of the main reasons why so many students quit language studies in schools