The government has invested €1 million in the San Ġwann and it can now cater for both the San Gwann and Santa Klara areas. The new building now has 19 classrooms, with a staff of 16 teachers and a resident speech therapist catering for 215 children, most of them under five years of age.

Minister for Education and Employment, Evarist Bartolo and Minister for Finance, Edward Scicluna visited the school this morning. Minister Bartolo said the kindergarten is the largest of its kind on the island. The purpose of the investment was to ensure that the school is equipped with modern technological means through which the teaching and learning experienceis mutually successful.

The focus is to create a ‘Learning Outcomes Framework’ to address the early years, according to Minister Bartolo. Studies have shown that the first 1,000 days of a child are the most critical and formative years for education. This is seldom appreciated, but the government wants to focus on and take advantage of these first 1,000 days to ensure that the children get a good start in education.

Minister Scicluna added that the “state of the art” equipment in the school makes us comparable to schools in some of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. The idea, said the Minister, is to prepare the children for a completely new standard of living which we are heading for in the near future. One of the advances which the Minister mentioned is the idea that in roughly 20 years, we will have a partly robotic workforce.