Malta Labour Party (MLP) spokesman for education Camelo Abela said that despite Education Minister Louis Galea’s statements, Malta is lagging far behind as regards the Lisbon criteria.

He called on government to start working seriously and stop playing around with figures.

Mr Abela said the MLP’s policies for MCAST, stated in the party’s Education Plan, clearly show that MCAST should provide technical and vocational education at secondary level, to compensate for the closing down of trade schools. He said these should have been modernised, not closed down. MCAST should also provide courses at different times of the day as well was vocational training at tertiary level.

Mr Abela said that the Labour government had abolished tuition fees at university, introduced the stipend scheme and the student-worker scheme, thereby permitting workers’ children to go to university. The Labour Party had also set up the faculties of education, engineering and management.

Mr Abela said that government has had enough time over the past 17 years to address the problem of illiteracy and of children leaving schools without basic skills especially in the field of science.

He said that capital expenditure before 1996 had been Lm1.5m, whereas in the budget for 1997 it was raised to Lm8 million, a five fold rise in 22 months.