Plenty of ‘Q’, but still waiting for the ‘A’

There was a revealing moment halfway through tonight’s PBS debate, in which l-orizzont’s Gaetano Micallef asked PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil a very specific question about the implications of the ‘Pisa report’.

To be fair, the question was so very specific that it wasn’t only Simon Busuttil who looked totally stumped. It turns out that the ‘Pisa report’ had nothing whatsoever to do with the Italian city by that name (as I for one imagined): instead it was a 2009 report on European scholastic performance which had determined that Maltese girls significantly outperform boys in mathematics, science and literacy.

Both the question and the answer set a blueprint for how the rest of the discussion would unfold – at least, those parts of it which actually stuck to the programme and discussed education. (Needless to say, One TV Ramona Attard evidently preferred to ask questions relating to the oil scandal).

Otherwise, nearly all the questions were rooted in a well-researched analysis of Malta’s present education system. Busuttil was asked to comment on: statistics concerning early school-leavers; literacy levels; the sustainability of higher education; streaming; the removal of the junior college entry examination; and many more beside.

Yet Busuttil limited most of his answers to merely outlining the same declared targets contained in the manisfesto: of building a new school each year, handing out tablets to all students (and teachers, too), while trumpeting past achievements that in some cases go back more than 20 years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his best moments by far came when addressing the camera directly during his introductory comments (unshackled, as it were, by any intrusive questions from the media).

“I myself am a product of the PN’s educational policy,” he said by way of introduction. “In February 1987 I applied to enroll at university, but because of the 10-point system introduced by the Labour government, I was denied an opportunity to continue my studies. Later that year, under a PN government, I got the opportunity to enroll. I was the first of my family to benefit from the PN’s educational policies, but many more – brothers, cousins, nephews, etc – would follow…”

In the end, he said he came away with two masters’ degrees - one achieved through a scholarship - “and my family never spent a cent on my education.”

All very impressive, but the same level of conviction would not be carried over into the Q&A part.

His answer to the Pisa question? “I am not competent to comment on the specifics of this issue…” And yet it was the PN which had chosen the theme for the debate (‘Another quality leap forward in education’, to give it its full due), and which also chose the party representative to field the questions.

So why did the Nationalist Party choose to put forward specifically Busuttil (and not, say, the prospective future PN minister for education), when by his own admission he did not feel ‘competent’ enough to answer questions about the government’s education policy?  

Nor was this the only question Busuttil seemed incapable of answering. The Sunday Times’ Christian Peregin asked how a future Nationalist government intended to guarantee sustainability of higher education, when the same party’s programme proposed dramatically increasing public expenditure on education across the board.

Again, the journalist brought up very specific examples. He mentioned economists who voiced concerns about whether the country can afford such lavish expense… and much more pertinently, he quoted the present University rector who complained about how the stipend system was stifling direct government investment into the university itself.

Curiously, however, Busuttil seemed to interpret that as a question about whether his government intended to remove the stipend system.

“The PN is committed not only to retaining the stipend system, but also to strengthening it,” he replied. Referring to Labour candidate Prof. Edward Scicluna (one of the skeptical economists), he dded: “It is the PL that needs convincing it intends to retain the stipend system, not the PN.”

Cue back to Peregin’s face, which had the following words practically written all over it: “Yes, but that’s not what I asked…”

The same pattern repeated itself even when he was handed relatively gift questions. At one point Peregin asked: “Your programme talks about ‘change’, yet what you seem to offering is ‘continuity’. Can you explain what, exactly, a new PN government intends to change?”

“That’s a big question,” Busuttil replied. Yet no ‘big answers’ were forthcoming. Instead Busuttil stuck to the line that the ‘biggest changes’ affecting Malta in its recent history had all been brought about by the PN… some as long ago as 1987… while the PL talked only about a change, without specifying whether it would be a ‘change for the better’.

“God forbid we change direction precisely now”, Busuttil intoned… forgetting, or so it seemed, that his own party was likewise calling for change.

By my count there was only one clear instance where Busuttil did indeed answer a very direct question – (“Was he happy about the loss of Erasmus funding, and the apparent lack of political responsibility shouldered over the same?” asked by Illum’s Karl Stagno Navarra.)

“We did not employ enough people to guarantee the sort of controls the Commission wanted to see in place,” he admitted after a rather long description of how, precisely, the funds were lost. “Am I happy about this? No I’m not. It would have been better if it didn’t happen at all…”

But it did, he added; we lost the funds, the government compensated students who were directly affected, and now we are back to enjoying the full benefits of the Erasmus.

The incident, he added, had to also be seen in the wider context of how successful Malta has otherwise been at absorbing EU funds.

Be that as it may, Busuttil himself was markedly less successful at informing viewers about his government’s plans to address the shortcomings raised by journalists throughout tonight’s debate. And this is a pity, because many of the questions did deserve more exhaustive answers.