Since winning the 1987 election, the Nationalist Party has made education one of its top priorities. And the sector is still very high on the agenda of the party in government forming, together with the environment and the economy, the basis of its plans for the country’s future.

The millions of liri that have been invested in the education sector over the past 20 years have opened avenues for the thousands of students who were in the system. The money was not only invested in physical facilities – the upgrading of schools and the building of new ones – but also in the human resources needed to administer the education sector.

It is a known fact that Malta cannot rely on natural resources, and therefore the investment made in its people is necessary for the country to succeed. The Nationalist government recognised this immediately and left no stone unturned to boost a sector that had, before 1987, been close to crumbling.

Suffice it to say that the University grew from a few hundred students that were allowed to join before 1987, to a few thousand who now go to the Tal-Qroqq campus. Added to this, the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology – a college that Labour had closed down – was re-opened and grew to such an extent that the government has announced that it will be investing heavily in a new campus.

All this has given Maltese young people many, and varied, opportunities to further their studies in areas that they prefer before finding employment. This is a far cry from what 16-year-olds found themselves faced with when they finished secondary schooling in the early 1980s, when the Labour Party was in government.

How the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party view the education sector and, more importantly, how they tackled it when they were in government is one of the main differences that exist between the two major parties.

While, under Labour, the education sector was on the verge of collapsing (this was explained editorially yesterday), under the Nationalist government the education sector flourished into what we know today – the University and MCAST bursting at the seams. The Nationalist government has also introduced a college system that aims to continue strengthening a sector that is, after all, the basis of the country’s future.

The only idea that the Labour Party has come up with for the education sector is the reception class, which is nothing more than a repeating class, in between kindergarten and primary school. This proposal has been shot down by none other than the Malta Union of Teachers, not exactly a union that accepts anything that the government suggests with open arms.

The introduction of a reception class will only serve to stall the system by one year. At a time when Malta needs as many human resources as possible, and what the system is producing – in spite of its growth – is not enough to meet the demand of the jobs that are being created, the reception class will mean that students will be leaving school one year later than they are doing now. This is a waste of time for them, a waste of money for the government, and their parents who have to pay for an extra year of schooling.

If this is Labour’s idea of improving the education sector, then we’re in for another period of difficulty as happened in the early 1980s, if the MLP is elected to government. Who knows, apart from the reception class they might then come up with the idea of having another year of school to bridge the primary and secondary school, stalling the system by yet another year.

Labour’s track record in the education sector speaks for itself. It was a period of strife, and many human resources were lost because Labour’s education policy failed miserably. And Labour has still to make an apology to those who wanted to further their education in the 1980s, and found all doors closed.