He is a veteran politician in Joseph Muscat’s Cabinet and an outspoken one at that. Education Minister Evarist Bartolo talks to Kurt Sansone about his ideas for educational reform and his flowery morning posts on Facebook.

Statistics released by Eurostat show Malta has the fourth lowest rate of people aged between 20 and 24 who are not in employment in the EU. Yet at the same time the government’s pre-Budget document speaks of a high rate of early school leavers. How can the two be reconciled?

We still have a general misconception that early school leavers are those who abandon school before reaching Form 5. This is not the issue. What we have to look at is the skills level and qualifications of those exiting compulsory education at Form 5. Here we have a problem.

Today, almost 75 per cent of the workforce is at Level 2, which is somewhere between primary and secondary school education, according to the European qualifications framework. It is not even end of secondary school level.

This statistic may not correctly reflect the skills level, because it records qualifications and certificates, which may not necessarily reflect skills obtained and honed through experience.

While I believe the assessment has to change to reflect the realities of people who are skilled but have no certificate to show for it, we still have to upgrade the quality of our workforce. As a country with a very low unemployment rate, I am still not happy, because a dynamic economy requires an ongoing skills development process.

Unemployment is at a record low, and yet there is a growing phenomenon of people in work with inadequate pay and conditions, which still makes them poor. Have these people been forgotten?

We were not scared of talking about the working poor and tried to address this through the active labour market policy. It is important to ensure wages improve along with job creation and economic growth.

We adopted policies that enabled people to go out and work, but we also addressed the working poor through measures such as tapering, where they retained social benefits for a period of time despite being employed.

You hear employers in certain sectors, like catering and construction, complain about not finding Maltese workers wanting to take up jobs. But people who could suitably fill these vacancies argue the pay and conditions being offered are not suitable to sustain a family.

We have to work harder to ensure wages and work conditions improve. This is one of the challenges we face. This is why we have to have strong economic growth, because on the strength of that, we can go about improving the standard of living.

These tall buildings have to be economically viable and haveto be designed well, and social spaces have to be created around them where people can meet and children play

Should the minimum wage be increased?

It may look like a plausible solution, but from what I observe in schools and after an in-depth reading of the Caritas report A Minimum Essential Budget for a Decent Living, increasing the minimum wage may not be the best way to address poverty.

Many of the problems linked to poverty are in households where no one works. Increasing the minimum wage will have no impact on these families. We have children being raised in households where none of the adults work, and this creates serious social and aspirational problems. These families require other targeted measures.

Malta Union of Teachers president Kevin Bonello has blamed the educational system for ‘losing students’ along the way. He says we are offering just the academic route. Is he right?

He is right. The one-size-fits-all system does not work. People have different styles of doing things, learning and communicating.

We cannot fit the thousands of children coming from a myriad of social realities into one box.

What will you do to address this?

The reforms we are planning at secondary school level will be an important development. The educational experience has to include a hands-on and participative approach that stimulates all senses.

Today, students are expected to sit down, absorb information, write down notes and be able to recall things from their memory. This is a comfortable system for somebody like me, who was raised in an environment where books, studying and writing were an integral part of my upbringing. But this system shuns those who are good at dealing with less abstract and more concrete matters. This does not make sense

The reform will see vocational subjects at the secondary school level being increased.

Will these be incorporated into the existing college system?

Yes. We will not return to the system of the past where we had segregated schools. Experience from other countries shows that within the same school it is possible to offer students different learning experiences. If we do not go down this route, we will continue losing children along the way.

Are teachers right in complaining about the difficulty in reaching all students in mixed-ability classes, or are these complaints an excuse, because teaching in this way is inconvenient for them?

Teachers are as much a product of the system as the children they teach. If I am a teacher I obviously prefer having a child in front of me who absorbs what I am saying, is on his best behaviour and able to spend five hours sitting down while reading and writing. But there are children who are unable to do this, because their personality and their way of learning makes it frustrating for them to sit down and listen.

I have had adolescent students telling me their learning experiences came from outside the school, where they experimented with things.

Some of them would be the ones teachers would send out of the classroom because of disruptive behaviour. But they would be willing learners if the mathematics lesson were taught using a robot.

This is a challenge for teachers, but there are situations that are objectively unrealistic. If I am a teacher preparing Form 5 students for the SEC exam, and in the same classroom I have those who are absolutely not interested in sitting for the exam, it is impossible to teach them together. I am a supporter of inclusion but we also have to be realistic, and it would be more beneficial for these Form 5 students to be given a specialised training programme.

Teachers complain of the syllabus rigidity and the exam-oriented system. Do you agree with them?

I agree with them. The system is unjust for students and teachers. It is not the first time that I attend school events and observe students being taught certain life skills, which in some cases they would not obtain elsewhere. There is a lot of good being done in our schools. A teacher could be doing sterling work with students by helping them cope with their social, emotional and personal difficulties, but the system does not value this. All that teachers are assessed on is the scorecard listing the number of students who passed their exams. This is why changes have to be made in a holistic way. It is useless changing the syllabus and not changing the assessment methods.

When will these changes happen?

I would like to have seen these changes implemented yesterday. I sometimes lose patience, but the experts rightly explain to me that if people have reform fatigue – constant changes without consolidation – any change will be as good as nothing. We are moving along the route to give State schools greater autonomy in decision making and with the learning outcomes framework, which sets targets on educational attainment, there will be more flexibility on the approaches used to reach those targets. We also have to help teachers with ongoing professional development, because we cannot expect them to change mentality and methods overnight.

Has the inclusion of disabled children in mainstream schools worked?

No, it has not. I believe there is a difference between hotchpotch and inclusion. Simply putting children under the same roof is not inclusion. It is physical presence. Let me make it clear that this was all done with good intentions, but inclusion is a much richer experience than simply bringing people together.

Putting children in mainstream schools and providing them with learning support assistants is good from a human and social perspective, and we should continue doing this. But there are instances where children with severe conditions need particularised programmes and specialists attending to their needs.

The MUT is proposing to remove the veto of parents on how their disabled children should be schooled, so as to give more weight to professionals when deciding on the best educational programme. Will you take this proposal up?

This is being proposed in the new Education Act.

We are proposing the creation of a specialised board to take such decisions and to guide parents.

This was all done with good intentions, but inclusion is a much richer experience than simply bringing people together

Parents must be listened to carefully, because nobody can love their children as much as they do. But I have to note that at times the problem does not stem from the parents.

If parents have been conditioned for many years now not to send their children to special schools and resource centres because these carry a stigma, do you blame them for refusing advice to the contrary?

Our challenge is to do things right, ensure we have trained people delivering the programmes and parents can be convinced to follow professional advice.

Are politicians to blame for fostering this mentality that also views LSAs as the ultimate solution for children with disabilities?

Yes. Over the past 16 years, we did create the illusion that assigning LSAs is the only way to solve the problems. Inclusion requires much more work… if a child with autism throws a tantrum and a quiet room painted in a certain colour is required to help calm him down, but the school does not have such a facility, how can we speak of inclusion?

The National Commission for Further and Higher Education has imposed strict conditions on Sadeen to open an American University of Malta. Sadeen have not yet replied but have indicated they will seek some compromise. Is there pressure within the government on NCFHE to ease the conditions?

Absolutely not. There was no pressure before and there is no pressure now. But I have to recall how the commission and people like Martin Scicluna [the former chairman] were ridiculed and described as puppets on a string when the evaluation process started, only to be held up as a model of good governance when the final recommendation was made. When the term of the last board expired, I gave them the choice to continue serving for a new three-year term. Some accepted, but others did not. All those who accepted were re-appointed.

Martin Scicluna offered to continue serving until the Sadeen application was finalised.

Legally it was not possible to appoint someone for a short period.

So the conditions will remain what they are?

Those were set by the commission, not by Martin Scicluna, so they will stay. The conditions signal the red lines for the type of educational experiences we would like university students to have in Malta. They are very stringent and show that it is not just a question of coming here with money and doing as you please.

This is the correct way of doing things, because it also safeguards the investors from rogue players.

We do not want fake investors who run away with students’ money.

Choosing where to behold beauty

A cursory look at Evarist Bartolo’s Facebook wall reveals daily poetic descriptions of his early-morning walkabouts in nature that communicate serenity.

However, he smiled when I asked him whether the beauty he conveys was a reflection of the government’s environmental track record.

“My descriptions are localised along the path I take in Wied Għomor valley, but I do not speak of the scene on the other side that is dotted with cranes and buildings going up,” he said.

The valley, which is the largest, natural open space between San Ġwann and Swieqi, has witnessed rampant construction alongside it over the past 50 years, he added.

It is Mr Bartolo’s way of saying that environmental destruction is not a phenomenon that started three years ago when the Labour Party was elected to government.

“The challenge we have today is how to maintain strong economic growth without destroying the environment,” he said, adding that the government’s decision not to have public projects in outside development zones should be commended.

“My ministry could have built the St Paul’s Bay primary school on ODZ land but we found an alternative site within development boundaries, and I am convinced the rest of the Cabinet are thinking on the same lines.”

Mr Bartolo believes the government has failed to communicate the good it has done on the environment, allowing the narrative to be dictated by its opponents.

On high-rises, he said they were acceptable to him so long as certain criteria were fulfilled. These tall buildings have to be economically viable and have to be designed well, and social spaces have to be created around them where people can meet and children play.

“They will be acceptable to me if these conditions are met, especially if the trade-off is to preserve ODZ areas.”

Does the 38-storey Townsquare tower in Sliema approved by the Planning Authority fit his criteria?

Mr Bartolo wriggled out of that one, saying he has not looked at the details but hopes the developers are thinking of creating social spaces around the building.

The longest pause for a sticky question

Evarist Bartolo’s replies were quick and direct, with very little hesitation – except when the Panama Papers issue cropped up.

He did say immediately that he stood by what he had said in April, that his Cabinet colleague Konrad Mizzi should have resigned after his name surfaced in a massive data leak showing he set up a company in Panama.

But the longest pause in the hour-long interview was when I described Dr Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, as the ‘stone in the shoe’.

The pause was accompanied by a smile and a not-so-nuanced answer that indicated Panama Papers is still very much a sore point for this government.

You did not mince words about Konrad Mizzi when the Panama Papers scandal emerged. Is this a closed chapter for you?

I still stand by the things I said at the time. I also believe in good governance. The older I get I realise it is not enough to stick to appeals, wishes and emotions. We need to have a system of checks and balances. Politicians, like everybody else, have to be protected from themselves through a system of checks and balances that goes beyond ethical codes of conduct.

I have to say that from the Panama Papers story we moved rapidly on the law regulating public standards.

But this administration has also removed the time-bar on corruption involving politicians and introduced a law regulating political party financing, which are steps in the right direction. This is also part of this government’s legacy.

But there remains the stone in the shoe called Panama Papers. Konrad Mizzi is still a minister and Keith Schembri still the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

[He smiles and pauses] Yes, the reality is still that.

Do you believe it will be better if Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri resign?

I already made my views known months ago. I spoke with respect but made my point very clear.

Do you still stand by what you said?

I still stand by what I said.