Evarist Bartolo: 'government inebriated with its own talk'

However, Bartolo insisted that in order for the new scholastic year to be better than the previous one, the government had to give “serious answers” to a number of questions.

He asked whether Education Minister Dolores Cristina was going to continue to manage her ministry during the past two years, where “she trusted only a few people of her own and ignore the thousands more whose contribution is vital to ensure that there is educational success”.

Bartolo questioned how long was the Education Ministry going to remain with an acting permanent secretary “borrowed from somewhere else. Is this the way such an important sector is led?” the Labour MP asked.

He also queried as to when a solution was going to be found “for the loss of EU funds for this year”.

Labour’s main spokesperson for Education also asked why teachers in the fifth year of primary school had been “saddled with the reform, with a little training and without any adequate resources…and the interactive boards were installed a year late”.

Bartolo also questioned as to why for another year, parents had to face “high expenses to buy uniforms and other educational material for their children”.

He also asked which were those schools that the Education Ministry was “planning to build, so that the transition in colleges works better. Why is the Ministry preferring certain colleges from others in this respect?” the Labour MP asked.

Bartolo also queried Cristina to give an explanation “about the status of the new national minimum curriculum”

Another question by Bartolo was about the lack of revision of the new syllabi “despite the fact that almost three years have passed from the establishment of the new colleges”.

Labour’s main spokesperson for Education also asked Cristina why the Education Ministry “was leaving in the hands of another Ministry” the introduction of e-learning in our schools.

Bartolo also asked Cristina to state “how many schools were going to start the scholastic year with an acting head and why”.

Labour’s main spokesperson for Education asked Cristina to state how the agreement with BTEC for the introduction of vocational subjects was made, “for which students will have to pay even in State schools”.

Bartolo also asked Cristina to state which schools “have benefited from Ministry works and Directorates as a Centre.

Which are those schools that have benefited from the College system?” he asked.

Finally, he questioned Cristina to state “what had happened from the plan for a new building for MCAST”.

We had a summer with Cristina trying to give “a wrong impression on how students had fared in the primary, secondary, MCAST, sixth forms and Junior College when she came out boasting with the results of those who had passed and fared well without sparing a single word for those who did not even sit for the exams and those who have started a course and stopped because they could not continue,” Bartolo charged.

“Instead of a lot of advertising and propaganda, we need serious initiatives in the education sector,” he insisted. “We’ve got a Government who has become drunk in beautiful words and is believing itself,” he concluded.