Jerome Caruana Cilia is right about one fundamental point: education deserves a serious national conversation. His call for a national education conference, bringing together educators, students, parents, academics, unions, policymakers and other stakeholders, is therefore worthy of consideration. Yet I would go further. Malta's difficulty is not simply that we have failed to talk sufficiently about education. We have talked about it extensively. The more uncomfortable question is whether we have been sufficiently prepared to act on what the evidence has been telling us.
Conferences can be valuable. Consultation is essential. Listening to teachers is indispensable. But another conference, however impressive its list of participants, will achieve little unless it produces clear priorities, defined responsibilities, measurable outcomes and, crucially, the political and institutional determination to follow through. Education policy suffers when discussion becomes an end in itself.
Nationalist MP Caruana Cilia raises important questions about literacy, numeracy, curriculum, vocational education, artificial intelligence and the support given to educators. These are legitimate concerns. However, they should also lead us towards a deeper question: do we really lack knowledge about the problems, or do we lack the structures and resolve necessary to address them consistently?
Anyone who has worked within education knows that reform cannot be achieved through slogans. Neither can it be achieved by changing curricula every few years, introducing initiatives without adequately evaluating their predecessors, or assuming that structural change automatically produces better learning.
Educational reform is painstaking. It happens in classrooms, lecture rooms, workshops and laboratories. It depends upon the quality of teaching, the expectations we establish for learners, the competence of educational leadership and the willingness of institutions to examine themselves critically. This is why evidence must become more important than political convenience.
Assessment data should not be treated as an embarrassment when results are disappointing, nor as a public-relations opportunity when they are favourable. Data are diagnostic tools. They should help us determine where students are struggling, where inequalities are developing, which interventions work and which do not.
The same principle applies to international assessments. Their methodologies and limitations should certainly be understood, but uncomfortable results cannot simply be explained away. Neither should individual rankings become the sole definition of educational quality. The intelligent response lies between those extremes: analyse the evidence rigorously, identify patterns over time and act upon what the evidence demonstrates.
There is another dimension that deserves greater attention: implementation. Malta does not operate in an educational policy vacuum. Over the years we have had strategies, frameworks, reforms, consultations, working groups and policy documents. The critical issue is what happens after publication. Who owns each recommendation? By when should it be implemented? How will success be measured? What happens if the intended outcome is not achieved? Without those questions, even excellent policy can become little more than an attractive document.
A national education conference would therefore be worthwhile only if it were designed differently from the outset. It should not simply provide another platform for familiar speeches about putting students at the centre, preparing learners for the future and valuing teachers. Few people disagree with such aspirations. The difficult work begins when aspirations must be translated into decisions.
For example, if we agree that literacy and numeracy are foundational, what measurable improvements do we expect within three, five and ten years? If we believe teachers require greater support, what precisely does that mean in terms of workload, professional development, classroom resources and career structures? If curricula are overloaded, what should be removed rather than simply added? If artificial intelligence is transforming education, how must assessment change so that we continue to assess genuine learning rather than merely the production of answers? These are harder questions because answering them creates responsibility.
There is also a danger in continually discussing education primarily through the language of crisis. Malta certainly has educational challenges, some of them serious, but it also has committed teachers, successful students, strong institutions and considerable professional expertise. Reform should build upon those strengths rather than demoralise the very people expected to deliver it.
Teachers, lecturers and educational leaders must therefore be more than participants in a conference. Their expertise must influence policy formulation from the beginning. Consultation after decisions have effectively been taken is not genuine participation.
And students themselves deserve a stronger voice. We frequently speak about young people while speaking remarkably little with them. If we want to understand disengagement, motivation, assessment pressure, digital learning and the relevance of curricula, students possess evidence that no spreadsheet can fully capture.
Ultimately, however, education cannot be separated from the society surrounding it. Schools cannot single-handedly compensate for every social inequality, family difficulty or economic pressure. Nor can teachers continually be expected to absorb responsibilities previously carried elsewhere in society. Educational improvement therefore requires coordination across social policy, health, employment, family support and economic planning.
Caruana Cilia concludes that Malta should aspire not merely to adequacy but to excellence. That ambition deserves serious discussion. But excellence will not emerge from a conference itself. A national conference may help us determine where we want to go. The real test begins the morning after it ends.
The question Malta must answer is no longer simply whether we are prepared to discuss the future of education. It is whether we are prepared to establish priorities, measure outcomes, acknowledge failure, sustain successful reforms beyond electoral cycles and hold institutions accountable for delivery. By all means, let us have the national conversation. But this time, let us ensure that the conversation ends with a plan - and that the plan ends with action.
Dr Katya De Giovanni is a warranted Organisational Psychologist