In keeping with the Nationalist Party’s electoral theme of the week, education was the order of the day at yesterday’s dialogue meeting in Rabat. Yesterday evening’s meeting, hosted by entertainer Claudette Pace, featured four guests all involved in the education sector.

The guests were unanimous in their disapproval of the Malta Labour Party’s reception class proposal, which would see the institution of an additional year of schooling in between kindergarten and primary level.

Speaking yesterday, Prime Minister and PN leader Lawrence Gonzi described the notion as another “big mistake” being proposed by the MLP.

The issue, he said, was of the utmost importance and that the MLP’s reception class proposal amounted to no more than a “gamble with our children’s future”.

“Do not experiment with them,” Dr Gonzi urged last night, “leave them out of it. Call it what you will, but what the reception class idea would amount to is children repeating a year of school.”

The proposal was representative of the “old Socialist philosophy” of putting all children in the same basket and holding them all back in life, he said, again urging the MLP to have the courage to retract the proposal.

The MLP, he added, was in the habit of quoting Lord Andrew Adonis, the UK’s parliamentary under secretary of state for schools and learners, of touting the reception class scheme. But, Dr Gonzi observed, the British educational system was exactly the same as Malta’s current system.

In the UK, he said, children moved up through a year of nursery to a year of reception class, and then on to the primary level. Malta, meanwhile, had kinder one, and kinder two, followed by the primary level. Labour’s proposal, he said, would see Maltese children having an extra year in between kinder two and primary.

Dr Gonzi observed how when the MLP had last been in power in 1998, only 40 per cent of students had proceeded to post-secondary level. Now, 10 years later, the figure stands at over 70 per cent. But this, he said, was not enough and the PN’s policies were aimed at seeing the figure rise to 85 per cent.

Dr Gonzi also expressed “solidarity” with university students who, he said, have been insulted by the MLP after Monday’s boisterous university debate.

“It is not right,” he said, “that university students come to hear a debate by the leaders of the country’s four political parties, only to be insulted as they have been by the MLP and its leader.”

It was disturbing, he said, that the MLP was debasing politics to such a level.