If there’s one day that every Maltese adult remembers, it’s receiving their MATSEC O level results. I received mine in the first year that you could opt to receive them by mobile phone and, ever the Luddite and suspicious of machines (for some reason, I thought that they might make a mistake and send me the wrong results), I opted to wait for them to arrive by post.

This did not turn out to be the best idea. For days, after many of our other friends had received the good or bad news, my best friend and I would wait beside our respective letter boxes for the postman to arrive every morning. We didn’t go to the beach or for a quick walk; we just waited like forlorn Jane Austen characters expecting news from the latest rich man with a sizeable estate.

When they finally arrived, and I almost ripped them to shreds with anxiety, I was very aware that this was the first major stepping stone into my future. At 16, my life was already taking shape in a significant way. In a sense, the rest of your academic life and the trajectory you will probably take depends on those results.

There have been many debates about the fairness of judging people by their qualifications, especially at such a tender age. Many have questioned why we continue to use a system that they perceive to be outdated and doesn’t play up to many people’s strengths. Yet, something which always seems to be brushed under the carpet year after year is the fact that our students are performing so very poorly in a country where education is not only free but compulsory till the age of 16.

We’re not just failing at long division; we’re failing our country’s future- Anna Marie Galea

This year’s results are in and they’re abysmal. Twenty per cent of Maltese students who sat for their maths O level failed it outright, with another 17 per cent failing Maltese. This in a country where many still refuse to acknowledge that English is an official language, communicate in Maltese and regularly rally against anyone who dares to speak English on local television.

You would think that all that national pride and bravado would translate into people bothering to learn the mother tongue they speak every day properly enough but, apparently, not.

As with many issues in this country, there needs to come a point where actual discussions start to take place about what can be done to improve our system and get students more engaged, rather than dumbing things down even further and continuing to develop a subliterate workforce that is unable to hold its own outside of Maltese shores. We must help people understand that education is not just about getting a job and sitting at the same desk till we die.

In a country with little natural resources, an ever-shrinking focus on farming and trades and crafts and where education has been compulsory for almost 80 years there are few excuses for why half the people in the country who are 15 and over have what has been described as a ‘low level of education’.

Seek advice from our teachers, revamp stagnant syllabi if that’s what it will take, launch campaigns that will, at least, attempt to pique people’s curiosity. We’re not just failing at long division; we’re failing our country’s future.