Minister to publish education trends report for nationwide consultation

Education minister Evarist Bartolo will be releasing publicly the reports on the Trends in Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Survey (PIRLS) reports, published on 11 December 2012, in the coming weeks.

"In the coming weeks we will start taking the steps to put literacy right at the top of our national agenda. We will set up a literacy unit to create, plan and coordinate the implementation of a national strategy to tackle the problem of functional illiteracy in Malta," Bartolo said.

"The lack of consistent and coordinated action to spread functional literacy in our society has had the result of placing Malta at the 25th position out of the 27 EU States, with an illiteracy rate of 36% among young people in Malta. Only Romania and Bulgaria have a higher percentage of illiterate youths."

Functional illiteracy is reading and writing skills that are inadequate "to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level" and contrasts with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.

Bartolo said the reports, which were unpublished by predecessor Dolores Cristina, will be discussed openly with teachers and parents.

In the PIRLS report, in 49 countries surveyed for the literacy skills of 10-year-olds, Malta placed in 38th place, 11 from the bottom. With 477 marks, Malta is ranked below the average of all the countries surveyed. Malta is ranked with another bottom 11 countries including Trinidad and Tobago, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Morocco.

The top five countries - with marks ranging from 571 to 558 - are Hong Kong, Russia, Finland, Singapore and Northern Ireland.

Children from Hong Kong fared best, with a classification of 571 points and with Russia, Finland, Singapore and Northern Ireland following closely with 568 and 567 points. Malta was awarded 477 points with Iran (457 points), Saudi Arabia (430 points) and Morocco (310 points) faring worse than Malta.

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) holds these studies to "improve policy and decision making about children's future education".

In 2012, the EU expert group on literacy also published a report on Malta that showed that Maltese boys are the lowest achievers in the EU. The high-level group's report highlighted a significant gender gap, with 13.3% of low achievers among girls compared with 26.6% for boys. The gender gap is smallest in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, and highest in Malta, Bulgaria and Lithuania.