Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/329964
12 Interview FOR people involved in the educa- tion sector, the events of the past weeks may seem a little like deja-vu: the government recently published a national education strategy, which seems intent on addressing more or less the same issues that such former strategies have clearly failed to re- solve. These include a stark mismatch in performance between boys and girls, as well as between different sectors of the educational landscape (independ- ent, government, church schools)… and even within different schools from the same sectors. Much more worryingly, recent statistics also in- dicate that Malta tops the EU list of early school-leavers, while the levels of literacy (among other indicators) rank among the lowest even among those children who go through the full 13 years of compulsory school- ing. This naturally raises a few ques- tions. Is this latest attempt any differ- ent? Why should educators feel any confidence that an umpteenth revi- sion of strategy will succeed where all others have failed? With this in mind I meet Frank Fabri, director of research and de- velopment at the Education and Employment Ministry, in his office in Floriana. I find him literally brim- ming with optimism: it seems that the latest document has been well received by the interested parties to whom it was sent: including all schools, MCAST, different Faculties within the University, the National Commission for Further and Higher Education, civil society, and indus- try. "Did you read it?" Fabri asks when we meet, handing me my own per- sonal copy just in case. As it hap- pens, I had already downloaded and scanned it enough to know what its four main policy target areas are: 1) to reduce gaps between the sexes and different categories of school, as well as to raise the bar in literacy, numer- acy, etc.; 2) to support children from low income brackets, and reduce the number of early school-leavers; 3) to increase lifelong and adult learning; and 4) to raise levels of tertiary edu- cation and training. This, Fabri tells me, already marks an improvement over previous strat- egy documents, which often tended to be overly long (sometimes more than 150 pages) and characterised by technical jargon, graphs, spread- sheets, and an overwhelming amount of data. "As a result most people wouldn't bother actually reading such docu- ments at all. Our intention was to do the opposite: the publication is only 10 pages long, it is written in simple and uncomplicated language, and focuses on a smaller number of key policy areas… the ones we feel are the most urgent, and which can be dealt with practically." The fact that I read it, he adds, at- tests to the success of this approach. More importantly, the same docu- ment was also read by the relevant professionals in the education field, and the feedback has so far been very positive. "Another difference is that the Na- tional Strategy for Education for the By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 JUNE 2014 A question of 'focus' and 'discipline' PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD