Education and training monitor 2018 : Malta.

Malta is investing heavily in education and training to improve learning outcomes and reduce the number of early leavers. General government expenditure on education, both as a proportion of GDP (5.4 % in 2016, see Figure 2) and as a proportion of total public expenditure (14.1 % in 2016), is well above the EU averages (4.7 % and 10.2 %, respectively). From 2018, additional funding has been allocated for increasing teachers’ salaries and for their continuous professional development. The performance of Maltese students in international assessments remains poor, with major disparities linked to socioeconomic background and type of school. In PISA 2015, the proportion of low achievers in science, reading and mathematics among Maltese 15-year-olds was significantly higher than the EU average. Results from the 2016 Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS) ranked Malta in 40th place out of 50 participating countries in terms of overall performance. This was well below the international average and there was a small decline since the previous test in 2011. Results showed that church schools performed better than state schools, which in turn performed better than independent Schools. Comparison is complicated by the fact that in 2016 the test language was Maltese, whereas in 2011 it was English. (Ministry for Education and Employment, 2018c).