Learn to know and to do…

Sir Stuart Rose, who struggled academically but has been such a successful businessman, says that in business, "We live in a truly meritocratic world. It is not intellectually meritocratic - it is results meritocratic. In other words, if you can do it, it doesn't matter where you come from. You can be accepted, you can make a living and you can make a success of yourself."

Governments across the European Union have now realized that their education systems have been failing millions of young people, as they have left up to 12 years of schooling without getting the necessary skills, attitudes and abilities to find a job or to continue studying. In the EU there are more than 26 million unemployed; 5.6 million of these are under 25. In some countries over half of the young people are without work.

To face this emergency of youth unemployment, the Party of European Socialists launched the Youth Guarantee. This is to ensure that young people not participating in education, training or employment will not be allowed to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed and will be urged to get a job, continue studying or get job training.

But this crisis cannot be solved only through the necessary changes and improvements in education and training. The economy needs to grow and create jobs. Austerity policies pushed by conservative governments stop the economy from growing. Prudent financial budgeting is crucial, and millions of young unemployed are today paying for the excesses of overspending governments. Education and training is essential for young people to find jobs, but without the re-launching of growth in Europe, these jobs would be short lived and unsustainable.

Six billion euros are going to be spent on the Youth Guarantee throughout the 28 EU member states. The European socialists believe that the EU should be spending more. They criticise the conservative majority in the EU for allowing 1,600 million euros to go to the European banks, which created the problem, and only allocating 0.3% of that sum to Europe's youth - who are a significant casualty demographic in the crisis that has undermined Europe since 2008.

At least now the billions spent on the Youth Guarantee are going to be supplemented by more funds from the European Investment Bank, and these funds are going to be tied to quality apprenticeships and investment in vocational education across Europe. All the meetings held recently to tackle youth unemployment in Madrid, Luxembourg, Brussels and, last Wednesday, in Berlin stressed the importance of vocational education and how necessary it is to give students on-the-job exposure, apprenticeships and traineeships while they are still in school, college or university.

This is the only way to break the vicious cycle trapping millions of young unemployed, who are without a job because they have no job experience and have no job experience because they have never had a job. The countries with the lowest rates of youth unemployment are the countries with the most successful apprenticeship schemes, traineeships and vocational education.

Even in Malta we need to take steps to get our act together and improve our apprenticeship schemes, expose students to job experience and spread vocational education in secondary schools.

We will be left behind and put ourselves at a disadvantage if we do not change and improve our education system from childcare centres to university and beyond, to ensure that our students learn to know but they also learn to do: they must have the skills needed for the real world. We will be involving businesses, unions and civil organisations, together with our educational institutions to introduce the necessary changes outlined in recent EU policy documents like 'Rethinking Education' and those produced by the European Alliance for Apprenticeships.

At the moment millions of young people across Europe are finding it hard to make ends meet, their talents are being wasted, they have been thrown into helplessness and hopelessness, their distrust of politics is growing and their disillusionment, frustration and anger could lead to a social and political crisis, not just an economic one.

While the European Youth Guarantee is designed to address the problems of the young who have left school and are unemployed, the necessary changes in education are meant to make it more relevant and really equip our young people for tomorrow, when it will be their turn to seek work. We must ensure that they are employable, while having the qualities of active citizens who want to shape the open and democratic society they live in.

Evarist Bartolo is minister for education