Perhaps Dr Philip Muscat (Education under Labour, TMID, 17 December) has conveniently forgotten about the students such as myself who were well-qualified to enter the University of Malta but did not have the so-called “sponsors” to give them the 20 points. The 20-point system was simply one of the attempts by the Labour government to close the church schools in Malta.

Students from private schools did not have the “sponsorship”. When I was a 15-year-old student at De La Salle College, so many of my schoolmates moved to the government-run New Lyceum because they were afraid they would not otherwise have been accepted for entry at University, and they were correct in their assumption.

The fact that all the students taken at that time (I refer to the early 1980s) may have been qualified is not the point – there was, of course, a numerus clausus and not all the best-qualified students were accepted. This was also established by the Injustices Commission after the Labour government finally lost power in 1987.

Because of what was happening at the time, a huge burden and immeasurable worry was inflicted on my family, but now I am happy to have lived in Italy for the past 20 years of my life.

Without doubt, the biggest “brain drain” ever to take place in Malta was during the oppression that students and young graduates had to face during the years of Labour rule. Need I also mention the 10-year doctors’ dispute, which led many doctors to leave the island and saw the health service run mostly by foreign doctors?

Dr Aidan Zammit Lupi

Castelnuovo di Porto (Roma)

Italy