In its budget for 2009, government had grandly announced that it was to spend €5.5 million of capital investment on the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST). But only half that amount was actually spent. For 2010, government reduced its capital expenditure on MCAST by €4 million and will be spending only €1.5 million, a third of which will be relegated to the new MCAST campus. When it should be mobilizing all its resources on implementing its master plan for this new campus, government is investing only half a million euros for 2010 on this project which will cost at least €120 million.
The campus was one of the highlights of the PN’s 2008 general election campaign. Now the new campus does not even get a mention anymore. We do not know when work on the project will start, nor when the project will be completed. Meanwhile, the existing MCAST buildings are not spacious enough to cater for the ever-increasing number of students, lecturers and facilities. The buildings are old, and it does not make sense to spend millions of euros on repairing and refurbishing them when, according to the master plan, they will be demolished in two, or three years’ time to be replaced by the new campus.
Government must take a clear decision on this issue. Two years ago, government said that the new campus would cost €120 million. Only 10% of these will come from European Union funds. Where will the other 90% come from? An implementation and financial plan of the project needs to be drawn up for the next five years. So far there is no sign of such a plan.
This year MCAST was expecting an increase of 5% in its students’ intake. But instead the increase was 16% and the MCAST student population has skyrocketed to 5,600. This very good bit of news was marred by the recurrence of the delays in the tendering process for contracting out to Private Training Providers the ICT courses that cannot be catered for at MCAST. The process was set in motion too late, and the contracts were only awarded and signed a few days ago. I followed this process closely but said nothing publicly. I did intervene where I saw irregularities taking place, but I kept my mouth shut to deprive a dishonest PN government from making me the scapegoat as it tried to do last year when the ICT courses started late because of irregularities in the tendering process.
This year I did not involve the police, but the courses are still starting late. The number of young people who applied to follow these courses was 450 but now only 300 will be actually starting as 150 are either giving up on studying because of the delay or, one hopes, have joined other courses.
The Education Minister should have the decency to apologise to these 150 students who have been deprived of the ICT courses they wanted to follow. Good to know that the contract covers three years now, which means that, at least for some time, we will not have a repetition of what we have had in these two years when students started their courses late, as MCAST took too long to get its act together to select the Private Training Providers for its students.
The education minister also misled Parliament during this tendering process when she said that there was no wheelchair-bound student waiting to start and ICT course at any of the private training providers. One of these providers, considered close to the minister, used this misleading information in court when it challenged the decision of the adjudication board which accepted the recommendation of the National Commission for Persons with Disability (NCPD) to reject the provider’s application as its building was inaccessible.
I am informed that the education minister misled parliament and there is at least one wheelchair-bound student that has been sent to follow a course at a private training provider that is not accessible totally for disabled students, according to the guidelines established by the NCPD and the EU, which is providing the necessary funds as long as the providers follow the obligation to be accessible for disabled persons. The minister should look into this and also explain why she misled Parliament.
MCAST needs more human and financial resources to cope with the wide range of services that it is offering: from teenagers who leave secondary schools without basic skills and competences to young people who will be graduating at University level for the first time next year. To ensure that these educational services are of a high quality, to reduce the number of drop outs, to provide the necessary qualified staff and well resourced facilities we need a well thought out strategic plan for MCAST for the coming years.
The recurrent expenditure needed by MCAST should be approved by Parliament at budget time and those who run MCAST should not be reduced to Oliver Twists and go begging for some more to the Finance Ministry towards the end of the year to be able to pay their staff. MCAST also needs a stronger administrative core and a management information system for good governance. The top leadership is so taken up with daily chores that they do not have any quality time to communicate regularly with staff. If not properly and adequately addressed, this will undermine MCAST’s successes so far.
If we really want 85% of our 16-year olds to continue in education and training after they complete secondary school, we must give all the necessary resources to MCAST as it will have to absorb most of that increase. While we celebrate the success of 60% of our secondary school students who move on to higher education, we must not abandon those 40% who are leaving our secondary schools unqualified and unskilled.
We need properly designed Link programmes where students of Form 4 and 5 are attracted as early as possible to post-16 education and training programmes. We need strong partnership agreements between secondary schools and educational institutions like the Institute for Tourism Studies and MCAST. Secondary school students should be given the option to study modern vocational subjects where they learn by doing which is for most of them a more relevant and effective way to learn.
Evarist Bartolo is Labour shadow minister for education
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