Malta must focus more on solving its problems with education than on how the structures should be changed, argued Labour leader Alfred Sant yesterday.

Dr Sant was concluding a Fondazzjoni Mikiel Anton Vassalli seminar on the subject of secondary schools.

We may be making the same mistakes in education as we are making in tourism, Dr Sant argued: paying most of the attention to structures and not to real problems. The debate over which structures are more suitable is an interesting one, but is often irrelevant to the real needs of our students.

The number of students who come out of school without having learnt to read and write in Maltese and English, without a basic understanding of mathematics or a basic level of life skills, should make one and all worry. There must be more resources devoted to this, more use of technology and an implementation of a curriculum about which there is wide agreement, plus benchmarking of the teaching that is given.

Dr Sant also pointed out that the secondary level of education builds on the primary level, so it is not fair to expect that secondary school teachers make good what has not been done at primary level. That is why the Labour Party is proposing to create a reception class between kindergarten and primary school, to create the best basis for the teaching that will follow.