The Malta Union of Teachers had warned the Malta Labour Party almost two years ago not to go ahead with the reception class proposal before discussing it in detail.
In an interview with MaltaToday, MUT President John Bencini said the way the proposal was put forward for the first time by the MLP in 2006 generated immediate concerns within the union.
“When in May 2006 the Labour Party came out with its draft education policy plan, we analysed it and discussed it on our council, and this proposal immediately set off the alarm,” Bencini said.
As Labour’s proposal for a reception class – an extra year of schooling intended to facilitate kindergarten children’s streaming into primary education – becomes the unexpected focus of the electoral campaign, a MaltaToday survey finds that 49% of respondents prefer the Nationalist party’s policies on education, with only 32.2% preferring Labour’s policy on education.
The survey, held a week ago amid a storm of controversy on Labour’s reception class proposal, shows that the PN’s scaremongering campaign which dubbed the reception class proposal a “repeater class” has left an impact on the electorate.

Clearly fed up with the partisan ping-pong that education has ended up in, with daily phone calls from teachers, schools and parents asking for guidance, MUT president John Bencini says the reception proposal does not address the existing problems facing young children but actually create a ripple effect that would send tremors throughout the system.
“When we discussed this internally we had a lot of questions about it. Plainly we decided we were against increasing an extra year in primary. We definitely disagreed with adding a year, because it would have too many consequences. If you’re going to increase the number of compulsory years you are going to have a ripple effect. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong in itself, but the effects have to be studied.”
Bencini said that shortly after his union discussed the measure, they had a meeting with the MLP in which the party was advised to tread carefully.
“In that meeting we had expressed our agreement with the bulk of the policies, because they are also reflected in the agreement we have just reached with the government. So in fact what the government is saying, what Labour is saying and what we want is very similar, we’re more or less on the same wavelengths. When we got to discussing the reception class however, I told them clearly we were worried about this proposal. I also said this needed a lot of discussion. I felt this was quite obvious as this was just a draft plan. We told them we disagreed and urged them to look into it. Although we were far from an election the gist of our message was, ‘don’t present this as an electoral proposal’.
Since then we haven’t discussed this proposal again, nor any other part of the policy document, and all we know is that this proposal is in their manifesto.”
Giving his idea about the effects of this proposal, Bencini said the first obvious effect would be getting children to leave school at 17.
“Again, it’s not wrong in itself, but we feel the number of years our students spend at school are enough. If you have lacunae in the system and children are falling by the wayside, it is not because of the amount of years in school, it is happening because of a whole number of reasons, including our exam-oriented curriculum and the obsession with exams, the syllabus, the glaring lack of student services in schools, the number of students per class and other reasons. So it is not a solution to add a year.
“You have a number of students who unfortunately are unmotivated, with extremely difficult behaviour and absenteeism, and those are the problems we have deal with. If you have an unmotivated student and you’re going to keep him until he is 17, you are only going to increase his frustration and problems. This, besides the logistical problems this measure is going to bring with it, which government would have to solve. This measure requires much more teachers employed in primaries. Of course we would welcome having more teachers employed but the reality is that the number of students entering university to become teachers is dwindling seriously. It’s scary actually. The B.Ed. course is not popular anymore. A course that used to attract some 100 students now has 14. And men are no longer taking this course – they’ve given up completely on this profession apparently.”
Bencini also countered the government’s criticism of this proposal, which is calling it a “repeater class”.
“It’s not a repeater class – we never referred to it in that way,” the MUT president says. “Repeater class would mean you’re in kinder 2 and you’re going to repeat that year. We’re just saying it does not make sense adding an extra year between kinder 2 and primary.”
Bencini said the blueprint for a veritable reform in the early education already exited in the latest agreement the union reached with the government, although there was barely enough to start implementing the agreement – especially student services to help identify low achievers from the earliest.
“In this reform there is a lot of emphasis on early childhood education, which is kindergarten and the first years of primary. So we insisted on addressing the problems in early childhood education because that is the foundation of the child’s education. If you fail there you’re doomed for total failure. Now we found several issues to be dealt with from kinder to year three. We have children who are falling on the wayside. If you have five children who are faring badly in literacy out of a class of 20, they will remain disadvantaged all their life unless you look at the causes and reasons behind their problems. That is why we need student services on the ground.
“Now in this agreement we have managed to get things that did not exist before. Within two years’ time, whoever is engaged as new kindergarten assistant needs a diploma or a higher qualification in early childhood education and care. The idea is to give the best to our children.”
Among the improvements in the system is the so-called Record of Development and Progress at Kindergarten Level – a record kept for every child to monitor progress.
“This is not an exam, it’s an ongoing assessment of every child from kinder 1 to kinder 2, but here we have serious problems. A very important aspect in the agreement we reached is the introduction of student support services. We have a crisis here actually. We’re talking about councillors, educational psychologists. The European Union says the norm is usually one educational psychologist for every 4,000 student. So for our 90,000 students we should have some 25 psychologists. All we have is three for all of Malta’s schools. So you’d get the headmaster calling for student support but this would never materialise because they can’t cope with the workload. As to councillors, we have 10 in Malta and one in Gozo – for all government primary and secondary schools.”
This means that at the end of the year you’ll have a truckload of student progress reports with hardly anyone to monitor them.
“We called this a historic reform, because it will be once it starts being implemented. Now it is up to those governing the country to start implementing the agreement we reached. They’ve only implemented the reform at the top, by appointing principles, but there is still no difference felt on the ground and in the classroom. Unless the reform is felt in the classroom it’s useless appointing many chiefs, and we’re still very, very far away.”
Bencini said the next step that should happen is the gradual and studied removal of the 11+ exam for entry into Junior Lyceums and secondary schools.
“What should happen today is the removal of this cursed 11+ exam. We’ve been saying this since time immemorial. There should be a strong comprehensive system as there are in Nordic countries and in the rest of Europe. Of course this needs a lot of investment, because quality education is expensive. Children would move on from primary to secondary according to a continuous assessment, without segregation, within the same school, as happens everywhere else in the world. But government has been adamant about keeping this exam.
“The first curriculum to come out written by educationalists, when Evarist Bartolo was education minister, argued for the removal of this exam. I remember this was leaked to Il-Gens and all hell broke loose. I remember Bartolo getting all the flak and abuse, when he was not even involved in it as this was just a suggestion of education experts. But all educationalists agree that this exam does not make sense and that it should be removed gradually. You don’t judge a child exclusively on an end-of-year exam. It gives the message that whatever he does during the year is irrelevant.”