And then people get upset when anyone says that Malta has a massive problem with ignorance

The results are still a lot better than they were until a couple of decades ago, when almost nobody went to sixth form college, let alone university or training colleges.

But 25% in today’s world remains a great deal of people because, let’s face it, what prospects do you have in life and work when you leave school at 15 or 16?

And it’s almost a dead-cert guarantee that you will remain uneducated for life. Many of the women and men my age – but especially the women, I’m afraid – who left school at 15 as most did back then in the early 1980s, know practically nothing about anything today and have remained very child-like intellectually. It’s as though they were ‘frozen’ in terms of knowledge and its acquisition at the age of 15 or 16.

Those who are not that way actually made a determined effort to read, find out and keep up, but they are the minority. It’s so sad to see it being repeated in a younger generation, especially because attitudes towards women, careers and education are supposed to have changed.

On the front page of Times of Malta’s print edition today: