Treasure hunt leading... to an end

Just over a year ago Education Minister Louis Galea, flanked by Louis A. Farrugia, HSBC director and one of the Moviment IVA leaders, gave a press conference launching a grand pilot project to combat illiteracy in schools.

Minister Galea said an agreement was reached with HSBC Bank Malta plc to use its HSBC Cares for Children Fund to cover the cost of implementing the initial phase of Institute of Child and Parent Learning Support (ICPLS) - HSBC Hilti Tezor programme in 11 schools which had been identified as having serious literacy problems.

This grand pilot project to combat the problem of illiteracy in primary schools died within a few minutes of the end of the ministerial press conference. As soon as the video-cameras were switched off and the reporters left the media event, Minister Galea lost his focus on illiteracy and some other issue captivated his fancy.

Despite all the minister`s nice words about the suffering of children who fall behind and despite all the buzzwords about the need to be pro-active by adopting a multi-pronged approach offering both remedial and preventive measures to help poorly performing pupils and to combat school failure... a year later the enthusiasm shown in the verbal gushing launch of the project has practically died down.

Ten schools went missing

In the past year the only sign of activity related to this project took place at the Gzira Primary School. What happened to the ICPLS - HSBC Hilti Tezor programme in the other 10 schools identified as having serious illiteracy problems?

A year and two months after this programme was launched, Minister Galea rediscovered the problem of illiteracy in our primary schools. Was this perhaps due to the Council of Europe seminar on illiteracy in Malta in February? Was it perhaps due to the fact that HSBC wanted to find out how the HSBC Cares for Children Fund had been used to support the literacy campaign in 11 schools as described on page 6 of HSBC`s in-house publication Munita, Issue 63?

Whatever the reason for Minister Galea`s rekindled interest in illiteracy, a few weeks ago he held another press conference to launch yet another project to combat illiteracy in schools. This time there was no mention of the 11 schools identified as having serious literacy problems. Minister Galea announced that the Hilti Tezor project, apart from Gzira, would start operating in five primary schools: Cospicua, Dingli, Ghaxaq, Hamrun and Valletta.

Answering PQ 32,411 Minister Galea said that three persons have been recruited to work in the Hilti Local Centres of these six schools. On what criteria were these six schools chosen? Is it a coincidence that two of the chosen schools hail from the minister`s districts? Why were other schools, with more serious problems of illiteracy than these two, left out?

What happened to the 11 schools identified as having serious literacy problems? Why is Gozo being excluded from the Hilti Tezor programme when the 1999 National Survey on Literacy among seven-year-olds identified children living in Malta`s inner harbour area and Gozo as being the least likely to succeed at school?

Apart from failing to deliver on the commitment made last year to carry out a literacy project in 11 schools, the ministry has failed to support the Literacy Unit of the Faculty of Education of the University. Every year the ministry has been voting Lm20,000 to fund the programme of this unit. But every year at budget time the financial estimates of the ministry show that not a single lira has been passed on to the unit to be spent on tackling illiteracy in schools. The unit has not been given any money from the HSBC Cares for Children Fund set up to support the literacy campaign in schools.

Zero funds for the Literacy Unit

In its report Literacy in Malta published together with the National Foundation for Educdtional Research, the Literacy Unit recommended that children having severe difficulties in Maltese and English should be identified and given intensive individual support. Children struggling with both languages should also be identified and monitored and given help in small groups.

Action needed to be taken not to let boys fall behind in this important life skill.

Priority had to be given to state schools to address the disturbing question, "Are two-thirds of pupils being condemned to an inferior education?"

Further investigations had to be carried out to explain the poor performance in Inner Harbour and Gozo. The Literacy Unit also indicated the follow-up work that needed to be carried out after the Literacy Survey: "After literacy, the most crucial skill area is numeracy, the science and ICT (information and communications technology:) increasingly important."

In the last three years all this work has been left largely undone.

In the meantime the Nationalist Party in government has dedicated all its energies to joining the European Union. Together with the Moviment Iva the Nationalist Party insists that EU membership would be for the benefit of our children.

It is easier to indulge in slogans about what is good for our children than to take serious initiatives to change the reality which is condemning children to educational failure at a very early age. Children who fail in primary schools hardly ever recover later on in life. Most of them never acquire the basic functional skills they need as citizens and workers in the 21st century irrespective of whether Malta becomes a member or a partner of the European Union.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com