More than another brick in the wall

Education has become the new frontier for us to compete as a people. It is the true natural resource of the Maltese. The belief of the Nationalist Party in marrying the world of education with that of the real needs of the economy marked and still marks the enormous gap between the two major political parties.

Labour's rushed proposal to increase a year after the kindergarten stage, which has given rise to serious misgivings even with the Malta Union of Teachers, is just the last of an interminable series of misguided Labour initiatives in education.

One cannot forget the disastrous state the educational sector was in when the Nationalist government was elected in 1987 after 16 years of Socialist rule.

It is our common memory when the doctrinaire socialist measures of the "student-worker" condemned whole generations of students to the humiliation of having to beg for a "sponsor" that would guarantee him/her a job throughout the six months "work phase" of each academic year of the course applied for.

Today, thanks to the Nationalist Party's belief in free choice, it is often the market which is now "chasing" students to join them in the hope that the students would remain with them after gradauation. And this with a university population that has grown from a mere 900 in 1987 to over 10,000 to date.

This is the difference between the PN, which has steadfastly believed in the freedom of choice, and the Socialists who have always believed in a central control of every aspect of our lives. Who can forget the revocation of the Church school licences? The Socialist government, when Alfed Sant was president of the Labour Party, was more emphatic on the "xejn" (nothing) rather than the "b'xejn" (free of charge) in their "jew b'xejn jew xejn" slogan.

Still in our collective memory are the mass meetings organised by the parent organisations protesting against the Socialist measures which were directed at Church schools.

The PN's answer to this cenralist approach to education was to allow the flourishing of independent schools while all the same modernising and strengthening the state schools. Since 1987 a completely new sector of primary and secondary education was created through the efforts of parent organisations or of private enterprise, with thousands of pupils benefiting from a true and real right of choice in the field of education.

These measures were strengthened by a revolution in the financial support given by the Nationalist governments to 15,500 university, Mcast and post-secondary students in the form of the stipend and the student card. This was not only an educational revolution but also a social revolution in democracy in education. Families, who up till a few years before, did not even consider the possibility of having their children benefiting from a university education, despite it being free as a result of measures taken by earlier Nationalist administrations, were now able to send their children to the University in their thousands. Parents find pride in seeing their children graduate in sectors they could only previously dream of.

The freedom of choice must not only exist at the private sector but also in the public schools where every effort must be made to continue the progress made through the investment of millions of liri (then) to modernise schools and to ensure that public schools benefit from all the advantages of the modern technological age. To date the Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools has invested over €58.2 million (Lm25 million) in works carried out in this regard. The government has, moreover, allocated €139.8 million (Lm60 million) in the building and refurbishing of state schools.

Education, more than any other sector, depends on the confidence the people have in the system. The efforts of so many hard-working teachers of public and private schools, giving their best effort to provide their pupils from all walks of life with the possibility of moving on and in joining the thousands who, now more than ever before, are making it to the post-secondary and tertiary university stage, must be praised.

A clear line of demarcation exists between the Socialist concept of education and that of the Nationalist governments. On its own, it ought to guide voters on how to exercise their right to vote at the forthcoming general election. Students pursuing their rightful ambitions through education are more than just another brick in the wall. They reflect for us our country's investment in its future.

Dr de Marco is a Nationalist member of Parliament.