A few days ago, Simon Busuttil made some changes in the Shadow Cabinet made necessary by Lawrence Gonzi’s decision to relinquish his seat in the House of Representatives and Chris Said’s election to the post of Secretary General of the Nationalist Party.

The Nationalist Party Leader has invited me to shadow the Ministry of the Family & Social Solidarity. Quite a large portfolio but I must admit that I relish a new challenge. I love the area assigned to me. My years of studying sociology, as well as others I spent chairing the parliamentary committee for social affairs, have only increased my enthusiasm for the area. As I attempt to fulfil the expectations attached to the new role, I will definitely find my predecessors in the field of Social Policy, mainly Louis Galea, Lawrence Gonzi and Dolores Cristina as a great source of inspiration. Their vision and leadership of the sector along the years has been groundbreaking.

This is not to say that I was eagerly awaiting the moment at which I could take my leave from the education sector. To the contrary; in the few months I have shadowed the sector from the Opposition benches and in the five years as Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education, I have become deeply appreciative of the great effort and dedication that goes into it, not least by the educators themselves. I am sure that my able colleague Joe Cassar, who takes over education, shall be working closely with them along the way.

Imitation is the mildest form of flattery

If proof were ever needed that the educational policies adopted by the Nationalist Government were the right ones, look no further than the fact that in substance, no major policy change has been proposed prior to the elections or taken place since March. The Labour Government has quietly pursued the same objectives along the same paths, while sometimes taking credit for successes that are not entirely (or at all) its own.

The building of new state of the art ‘Tomorrow’s schools’ seems set to continue after much uncertainty caused by Government’s lack of clarity about the issue. It now seems that Government will also be following the same financing plan for the building and maintenance of schools. The ‘voluntary’ introduction of co-ed education was not a first at all. Co-ed education has already been successfully introduced by private schools in Malta, while the first co-ed state school, the National Sport School, was successfully launched just over a year ago, as well as strategies for vocational and informal education. An agreement with China, which the PN negotiated, was signed and the award of scholarships (2,000 scholarships awarded in the last five years) will go on.

While in the last five years, criticism about early school-leavers was never lacking, albeit the number of students pursuing post-secondary education doubled since 1999, the Minister of Education has confirmed that the new Government will stick to the same strategy and targets pursued by its Nationalist predecessor to reduce early school-leavers.

So much for Muscat announcing his Party’s own ‘roadmap’ in the field of education during the electoral campaign.

A Strategy for Literacy for All

Our educational system has in the last years experienced gradual but profound changes. So much so, that the then Government was accused of causing ‘reform fatigue’. But all the reforms were born out of vision and enthusiasm to materialise the ‘For All our Children to Succeed’ mission. We cannot afford to lose any more children by the wayside. Malta’s participation in international studies helped us identify strengths and weaknesses in certain areas of our educational system and while recognising the shortcomings, we can proudly say that some follow-up action saw Malta being cited as a case of best practice in the EU.

The National Policy on the acquisition of core competencies in Maltese, English, Mathematics and digital literacy was launched four years ago and the Framework for a New National Curriculum now has core competences as part of the primary education curriculum. Huge financial investment allowed for e-learning to start to be applied in practice. Some 10,000 families also benefitted from after-school programmes complementing compulsory education.

The Literacy Strategy document launched for consultation recently simply does not make the grade. It does not even merit being called a strategy. It is merely a document written in haste to be launched for propaganda purposes in an attempt to denigrate a great legacy in education. The Nationalist Opposition will of course be more than prepared to engage in a serious discussion about literacy, but this is too important a subject to be so manipulated.

Hasty Decisions may derail progress in Education

Speaking about hasty decisions, the colleges’ reform recently launched and immediately pushed back was a very clear example of the lack of sense of direction, or ‘road map’ if you prefer. Under Labour’s watch, the college system was to be subject to changes that took into consideration the reduction of the student population of the colleges with scant regard given to proper planning, logistics and parents’ and students’ opinions. How else could you describe the attachment of the Floriana School to the distant one in Mellieha?

The Mellieha Head of School, who had capably handled her duties in the past, was recently issued with a transfer notice for no apparent reason, as was the Head of School of the National Sports School. To add insult to injury, the National Sport School was being placed under the Head of School of St Benedict’s Secondary School, which is tantamount to destroying the ethos and autonomy of the successful school I proudly inaugurated last year. It took pressure from teachers, parents and the school council to reverse the decision and convince the Minister that you don’t replace someone that works well; a point that you wouldn’t have thought needed much explaining.

More of these rushed decisions, if they continue, may derail the comprehensive reforms carried out a few years ago through the creation of colleges. Prudence is recommended. It is the future of our children that we are talking about here.

Political Transfers in the Sport Sector

Following the hundreds of political transfers in the Elderly Sector, the Police Force, the Health Ministry and elsewhere, the malaise of political transfers has also touched the sports sector. Things have long been in the making.

All public service and public sector employees who have served in the private secretariats’ of Ministers of the previous administration have been redeployed to various government departments and entities. This is normal practice. They were redeployed to these departments because they were already government employees prior to their redeployment there. So these employees are not to be likened with that huge number of employees serving the Labour ministries who were recruited from the unemployment list or the private sector.

A number of these employees were redeployed to the Malta Sports Council (KMS). Through their vast experience, they could only have contributed towards further strengthening the KMS, which has grown constantly in the last years. Instead, they were immediately targeted and the Labour-leaning media sought to portray them in a bad light simply because they served Malta under a Nationalist Administration. The employees claim that a commissioned audit of the KMS staff and quite a few parliamentary questions coming from the government backbenches also sought to undermine their role at the KMS.

All this build-up led to the Labour politically appointed KMS Chairman being informed that the employment at KMS of these employees was being revoked on the instruction of education minister Evarist Bartolo. Is this the new way of doing politics we were promised? So much for the ‘Malta Taghna Lkoll’ slogan! Isn’t this political vindictiveness at its best?

Old habits die hard

Taking on the Social Policy portfolio, I had hoped that my first pronouncement on the subject would be policy-related. It was not to be. Albert Buttigieg was forced to resign as CEO of the Housing Authority, by the same government that had promised one and all that ‘You may not vote for us but you can work with us’. It had been long coming, from a tar-and-feathers treatment over an apartment with a missing soap-dish, to making appointments to the Authority’s Board so that now it looks more like a Labour Party committee.