Education Minister Byron Camilleri has raised the prospect of once again reintroducing “trade schools” for secondary-school children. He said that we may not be giving students who want to follow a vocational path the required skills and opportunities for their chosen route.
Trade schools were shut down by Nationalist administrations in the 1990s and eventually closed completely in 2000, after a report in 1999 found that trade schools did not meet educational standards, with most students achieving low grades, while the skills they were being taught were not necessarily in line with technological requirements.
These schools were used as a dumping ground for children who refused or were unable to achieve good grades, and the outcome of their education in these schools did not meet educational standards or provide them with valuable labour skills.
The model was a complete failure due to rapidly changing times and the increasing level of education required by children to navigate modern life.
Labour has crashed educational standards during the past ten years and more. The government is probably now looking for easy fixes to this situation, in line with its continued policy of lowering the quality of education in order to relatively increase standards. An excuse to have children fail their O-levels. The crisis in our education system is serious and systemic, with maths results showing the rapid decline in educational skills among Maltese children.
I don’t know who is advising the Education Minister, but the idea smells of naivety. Trades today are not the same trades as those of thirty years ago. Nowadays, machines used in trades are more sophisticated, are operated with software, and require a basic education in literacy and numeracy.
You can teach a child how to weld or how to bend a pipe, but a mechanic nowadays needs to understand electrical systems, use software, and keep themselves updated with mechanical and electrical literature, given the rapid evolution of engines. A tradie today needs those O-levels and basic skills more than the tradies of yesterday.
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