Extending compulsory education
Last week, the Malta Chamber launched its national workforce strategy, which included the proposal to extend compulsory education till the age of 18 from the current 16 years. It immediately brought reactions from various stakeholders and it is certainly a proposal that needs to be evaluated thoroughly.
The National Workforce Strategy itself needs a separate assessment and I will come back to it in a future contribution. However, the idea of extending compulsory education to the age of 18 has a number of implications that require a separate discussion.
I believe that there is a general agreement that it will be useless to extend compulsory education without reforming the education system in this country.
The additional two years should not just be an attempt to squeeze some more knowledge into the heads of our students. If that would not have worked for 11 years, why should it work with another two years?
In assessing such a proposal, we need to agree on how a child’s educational journey is to pan out over a period of 13 years instead of 11. We need to keep in mind that the primary aim of education is not to prepare students for a job but to equip the student with the required...