Education in an opening market

Abstract

Since going to office in 1987, the Nationalist Party (PN) initiated major changes in the Maltese economic and social policy. Amongst the numerous changes the PN government actuated there was the privatisation of formerly state-owned enterprises like commercial banks; the liberalisation of the market, the media, health and cleaning services; decentralisation of the state administration through the establishment of local councils in 1993; deregulation; and the running of government departments along private market lines as in the case of the Department of Posts, changed to Pasta Ltd. in 1994. Changes were also brought about in the educational field. The Education Act of 1988, one of the very first to be passed by the Nationalist administration, made it possible to practically anyone to open a school, on the grounds that the state had to ensure that each individual's fundamental right of free choice was met. Besides the setting up of new independent schools, older private schools extended their services, and schools which formerly catered mainly for primary school age children, started providing services at secondary level and some of them are even planning to cater for post-secondary level as well. The population of these schools increased to a marked 30% of the total number of students, which is claimed to be the highest in Europe. Some students of Maltese policy making refer to the parallelism which lies between these developments and those which took place in the West, and locate them within the New Right ideology which has spread all over the West in the 1980s. Others believe that the real motivation for the reforms enacted by the PN administration is the government's application to join the European Union (1990), rather than ideological impetus. It is also claimed that the Nationalist government's overall policy is an outright reaction to the previous sixteen years of Socialist rule (1971-1987). The scope of this dissertation is to examine these three stands. Through interviews with some of the main actors in the political, economic and educational scenarios, and through detailed examination of relevant documents, the dissertation concludes that there are in fact some significant similarities between Maltese policy making and the New Right ideology, although there are marked instances of contradictions, particularly in the educational development.