The Nationalist Party has pledged to give a €500 ‘discovery’ grant to all young people on their 21st birthday for a cultural experience in another EU country.

PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil said young people pursuing a language course abroad as part of this programme would receive €1,000.

Dr Busuttil said a new PN government would introduce 14 new measures in education.

These include the building of a new school every year, the rolling out of tablet computers throughout the educational system, the introduction of childcare services for parents who are still studying and granting 3,000 new scholarships, particularly in postgraduate areas.

Dr Busuttil said that the PN would provide more help to independent schools without putting more financial pressure on parents through increased school fees.

Education Minister Dolores Cristina said that a two-year exercise by the National Statistics Office and the EU’s statistics arm Eurostat led to a revision of data on early school-leavers.

She said that when using the same benchmarks as those in the EU, the statistics showed that the number of early school-leavers in Malta was slashed to 23 per cent and was now much closer to the EU average of 17 per cent.

Ms Cristina said the exercise would place Malta in a good position to revise its targets to continue to further reduce the number of early school leavers by 2020.