Education Minister Evarist Bartolo today insisted he is not on a crusade against MFSA chairman Joe Bannister, and neither is true that he wants the managing director of the Finco Trust Group of Companies, Paul Bonello, to replace Mr Bannister, as has been suggested in sections of the media.

“Paul Bonello has no interest in taking over and I have no interest in pushing him either,” Mr Bartolo said during a radio interview. He said he continues to criticize Mr Bannister because he is a person with a public role and “he didn’t fulfill his duties”.

The issue, Mr Bartolo said, is that when someone holds a post of that calibre for more than 10 years, he starts to act as if it is his own personal property and, as such, decisions taken might not be in the best interest of the larger picture. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think it’s healthy for someone to retain his position as a regulator for 20 years.”

Mr Bartolo said neither should University Deans think they hold a position for life. “Does it make sense that a Dean at University stays there forever? This will keep a number of people back.” Mr Bartolo said that we need to learn more from the American ‘revolving door’ system, using the American president as an example, “as good as he is, he can’t stay there longer than two terms.”

Speaking on Ghandi x’inghid, Mr Bartolo proposed the idea of severe grilling before someone is given high public positions, as long as the people grilling are not the people who have the power to appoint the roles. Mentioning Toni Abela briefly, Mr Bartolo said that he speaks with him regularly and Dr Abela is still traumatized that he failed to pass the European Parliament scrutiny to join the European Court of Auditors.

The discussion then moved on to No Portfolio Minister Konrad Mizzi and the OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, who three months ago were found to have secretly opened companies in Panama. Minister Bartolo had previously said that, if it were him, he would have resigned. “There is nothing illegal with opening offshore accounts and companies; but apart from following laws one also has to be correct.”

Mr Bartolo insisted that there should be specific legislation drafted specifically to tackle similar cases like this. “I hope that our country doesn’t lose the opportunity to take on this issue seriously and properly,” he said.

Repeating what he said in Parliament on Wednesday during the debate on Independent MP Marlene Farrugia’s motion of censure against the Prime Minister, Mr Bartolo said that the temptation for corruption in politics is enormous and we need regulations “to protect us from ourselves.”

He likened the current education situation to a shoe factory that only makes one size of shoes. “The education system is unfortunately one size fits all, whereas children are all different individuals. Average only exists in statistics, so we can’t focus on the ‘average’ student. We need to move from an average kind of educational system, to one of individualization.”

The Minister clarified that he didn’t mean creating 60,000 different programmes, “but we need to be flexible enough to reach various students.” There are currently a number of ongoing programmes in secondary schools trying to do just this, such as the Xl programme of informal education by Prince’s Trust International.

The issues of Malta’s “homework culture” and “exam mentality” were also raised. The minister said that these mentalities both need to change but he conceded that, although it is relatively easy to legislate, it is very difficult to change mentality.

There needs to be a balance between expecting a lot from our children and just letting them be children. “The time we have for formal education is enough when you consider how many things they do. I believe they can do a lot after the formal education time which will be valuable for how they develop as people.”

The minister said that work must be done on the syllabi to make them more manageable and, rather than having all students studying 14 subjects, why not have them focus on eight but with the result of doing them better in the end?

“Think of a plant, you can’t constantly calculate how much it has grown if you don’t give it some time to actually grow.” Mr Bartolo said this in light of the “exam mentality” which this country has cultivated throughout the years. “We can’t remove written tests altogether,” the Minister said, “but there are so many other methods that we are neglecting.”

On childcare facilities, Mr Bartolo said some parents simply abdicated responsibility abused the service. “We need to understand that the child care centres are not just a place to park children. We are very aware of the formative period of a child’s life.” In fact, the centres are focusing on making children’s experience an enriching one, rather than just a place to stay.

Regarding employment, the Minister said that it isn’t true that the government is just employing a large number of people. In fact, Mr Bartolo cited statistics showing that the amount of government workers from 2013 compared to today has gone down by 1%. The reason why employment is increasing in the private sector is because the government does not govern by austerity, like most countries.

Mr Bartolo said that what the government did is reduce the deficit and debts not by reducing spending, but by enlarging the economy. “Spending in sectors like Education and Health has increased. We got the money from the financial services, betting, construction and tourism which are all growing.”