The Labour Party’s spokesman on education, Carmelo Abela said the reception class as has been proposed by the MLP already exists in various countries, such as the UK, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, where education results were much better than Malta’s. It was known that where this class existed, better results were obtained in education as well as in other aspects.

The proposal had been put forward by heads of school and teachers at meetings in summer of 2005. They argued that such a class had educational advantages for children, including a gradual transition between informal (kinder) and formal (primary) education. Mr Abela said the Nationalist Party wanted to hide the huge shortcomings that were apparent in early education. After 20 years of Nationalist government, Malta lags far behind where the Lisbon Agenda was concerned.