The book is a plea for change across the entirety of education in Malta. More than that, it is a cautionary tale – one by an accomplished academic concerning democratic and community-focused commitment and determination; it is also a tale of woe.

Kenneth Wain explains this eloquently in this often-prophetic prose, describing, in vivid detail, what can happen in small and island states when education and policy leaders meet ‘small-thinking’ bureaucracy.

The book came about when Malta in 2001 was still an applicant for EU membership and was invited to ‘start a national consultation’ regarding an EU Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, dated October 2000.

The book cover

This is the story at least in part, about the author, who, after all, was commissioned to write a new Strategic Plan for Education and Lifelong Learning, and his abysmal treatment by the education ministry’ small island state’s bureaucracy.

The publication more broadly seeks to reintroduce this jettisoned original Strategic Plan to a current audience. The book, along with an introduction, is sectioned into the five parts, constituting the original Draft Strategic Plan 2003.

The introduction is the most disturbing part of the publication, because Wain recounts the unprofessional and disrespectful treatment of a valued academic and his work and that of his academic colleagues. Hundreds of hours of social and academic research and consultations are treated with ultimate disdain. 

The author paints a picture for the reader regarding first the ignoring of the 2003 plan, then its cannibalisation and replacement of the author’s 2003 plan with what is currently in use and presented as Malta’s position on the topic.

He maintains that it was an “obviously exceedingly selective, minimal and unacknowledged, version of the 2003 Plan, of which it is a watered-down cannibalisation (as the reader of the Plan below will notice)” on which he claims to not have been consulted.

This comes with the rider by Wain that it was “conveniently tailored to services already provided by the ministry, reshuffled, reorganised, and re-labelled as lifelong learning provisions”.

In short, Wain argues that the (draft) Strategic Plan of June 2003 was replaced without consultation with him, by a ministry’s December 2003 plan and submitted to the EU. The second plan essentially highlighted programmes and directorates Malta already had, with no or little progress. The ministry, he writes, went even further less than a year later, running a conference not to assess his plan but to assess current provision in the education sector.

He questioned whether “the translation of the objectives of lifelong learning in our country into policies aimed simply at producing an employable workforce, more knowledge workers, a competitive economy, and satisfied private consumers of information and other goods” constituted the only purpose of lifelong education. 

He acknowledges that these are “important objectives that should loom large in the formulation of our lifelong learning policies and in our national investment in lifelong learning strategies”. He would, however, want them included “in a more comprehensive, socially conscious lifelong learning policy that retains the idea of the learning society as a participative and educated democracy, that is based on solidarity and social justice.

In fact, the ministry had bypassed the author’s Strategic Plan entirely. The author provides detailed explanations over competing statements, omissions and facts regarding lifelong learning in OECD and UNESCO policy, ministry documents and statements.

This book entrusts the reader to reconsider the original 2003 Plan, considering the lack of much real and significant change.

The overall intention of the author is to challenge the idea that lifelong learning and compulsory and adult learning be not solely for the purpose of the economic needs of the country, but towards a broader learning society for lifelong and life-wide learning society culture. It is a challenge to economic rationalism in education, and it’s a very good one.

He reproduces the full Strategic Plan 2003, though minus graphs and other visual tools and aids. Acknowledging that the plan is now 20 years old, he finishes with his view that not much has been achieved in all sections other than the early childhood sphere.

The book is replete with lots of detailed data, spanning 30 years, that would benefit from graphs and visuals to make it easier for the reader. This would also make the document much more usable for the community sector and public sector to use when lobbying for change and more funding from Maltese and EU treasuries and funding streams.

The draft strategic plan covers lifelong and life-wide learning, and seeks to integrate them with standard compulsory and post- school and higher education systems as well as community-based learning settings in communities, schools, churches, libraries, football clubs, and festa committees in Malta.

In this way, it is breathtaking in its relevance to not only Malta but also to other small nations where communities are intimate, where the absolute need for education policy reform is obvious but perhaps unwelcome by ‘small-minded’ bureaucrats.  

In short, the author convincingly makes the case that, given that the purpose of the policy response he authored was not implemented and that the situation in Malta regarding lifelong and life-wide learning has not changed much since the Draft Strategic policy plan was written in 2003, a return to it is worth considering at the very least.

I would recommend the contents be presented in a web-based application as well with all accompanying graphs and updated statistics (rather than the 20-year-old ones). A Directory of Adult Education Agencies in Malta had been produced and published in 1990 by the Education Department and can also be updated. Adult education in Malta is a rich compendium. Together they can thus be used as a reference for funding and planning by the policymakers and planners at all levels of government and non-government entities.

The book is to be recommended. We ought to consider whether we Maltese as communities, educators, community workers/leaders, church group members, and local government officials, besides public servants, cannot do better regarding lifelong and life-wide learning in Malta but also in the treatment of our academic education sector.

Rhonda Balzan Bastow is an educator of adult education for community work in Perth, Australia. Lifelong Learning in Malta: Towards the Learning Society is currently available from the Faculty of Education office, Room 231, Old Humanities Building, University of Malta.