Education is one of the building blocks of society. An uneducated nation cannot move forward, develop its society or compete with the rest of the world.

Our education begins on our first day of life as a baby and progresses through years of formal schooling and beyond. It does not, and should not, stop when one leaves secondary school but must continue throughout one’s life. Young

people who fail to keep up with the latest developments in a fast-moving society will struggle to compete with their peers who have.

Over the years, the government has also seen the need for better education. While allowing private and Church schools the liberty to develop and make their own progress, it has invested heavily in state schools and built new ones to meet modern day requirements.

The latest addition is the completion of St Benedict School in Kirkop, a Lm3 million investment that will serve eight localities in the southern part of Malta. As Education Minister Louis Galea said, it was essential that the facilities at schools were improved and made more child-friendly.

This is also why, wherever possible, the government has embarked on a plan to modernise existing schools, making them more suitable to today’s needs and hence enabling students and their educators to learn and work respectively in a better environment.

The heavy investment, and the government’s efforts to offer a better level of education and new opportunities for students, is evident from the number of them – over 20,000 – who have opted to continue studying after

secondary school.

The university is bursting at the seams, with thousands of qualified students taking up tertiary education. MCAST is another success story, with a further 4,000 students studying a wide range of subjects in a variety of disciplines.

There remains, however, one problem. While young people should be allowed to pursue a career of their choice, educators should encourage them to follow courses that have been identified as being important for the country’s socio-economic development. To this end, the government’s recent amendments to the stipends system offer incentives to young people to study mathematics, engineering, science and information technology.

Education Minister Louis Galea said the economies of both Malta and Europe are in need of more professionals in these areas, and that was why the government was giving incentives to students to follow certain career paths.

In certain disciplines, Malta has reached saturation point. Naturally, students will continue to specialise in areas such as law, architecture and education, but the government has done the right thing in trying to encourage students to

follow a career in which there is a shortage of qualified

personnel. A cursory glance at job vacancy advertisements in the local press is enough to realise that people with science and IT qualifications are in great demand.

However, students cannot be asked to change their “planned” career when they are about to start university. They should be made aware of the career opportunities that exist – and those that will exist when they eventually finish their courses, be it at university or MCAST – in the early years of their secondary education.

This is where guidance teachers have an important role to play. Studies must be carried out to identify what Malta will require in, say, 10 years’ time, and guidance teachers should be directly involved because they are, after all, the people who come into direct contact with students.

All in all, considering the difficulties faced by the education sector in the early 1980s – a time when, for example, university entrance was limited – education has come a long way, and for the better. What Malta needs now is a more focused approach to the educational needs of the country and what the country’ requirements will be in the future.

The government seems to have realised this, and is working to this effect.