Government is going to remove streaming and exams in state schools. We have been there before and it is important to learn from what happened in the past if we want reforms in education to benefit our young people and our country.
In his ‘eyewitness account’ of ‘Malta in the Making’, Edgar Mizzi writes: “… plans were in hand at the beginning of the 1970s to introduce in Malta an exam-free education which allowed school children to advance from one class to another whether or not they were sufficiently prepared for the next grade. The British system – copied in Malta – proposed to test children at a later stage in life and at rather extended intervals; and even these tests were not exams in the traditional sense of the word… When the Labour Party took office in 1971, the Minister of Education, with Mintoff’s blessing, put into operations the plans elaborately prepared by her predecessor Dr Paul Borg Olivier. The system was short-lived, but the consequences were disastrous; and the Government Secondary Schools – where the system was tested – took a long time to recover.”
As we contemplate further education reforms we should keep in mind what George Santayana says: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” At the same time past failures should not paralyze us and stop us from bringing about much needed changes in our education system. But we must learn from the past if we do not want to repeat what happened in the early seventies.
We must improve our education system at kindergarten, primary and secondary level: we are still having too many teenagers who go through 13 years of formal schooling without acquiring the basic competencies in Maltese, English, Mathematics, Science and Technology. We still have too many young people, even those who go on to University, unable to use English properly. We are still lagging behind many other countries around the world in the number of young people who take up university courses in Science, Mathematics and Engineering that are indispensable for a knowledge society and the new economy. We need a better education system that nurtures more young people to be willing and able to take up R&D work in more knowledge based economic activity.
We should aim at creating an education system based on quality and equality. We need many students to excel and at the same time we must ensure that there is no wide educational gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. We need real change in our education system. We need to create the necessary conditions in our schools to provide top quality education to as many children as possible. Most of the changes that have taken place have so far been superficial. You can try to change the system from the outside (by changing administrative structures), or from the inside (by changing what happens inside the classroom).
So far government has been trying to change the system from the outside. I prefer a combination of both; with the focus on continuous initiatives that make change happen inside the classroom and schools.
Education is a complex system made up of many elements. Streaming and examinations are decisive elements among others interacting with each other in this system. But you cannot isolate them and change them and ignore other important elements of the education system and expect the system to improve simply by taking away streaming and examinations. I disagree with those who believe that removing streaming and examinations is some instant magical prescription that will solve every ill from illiteracy to stress and educational failure.
I am still a great believer in the method Karl Popper describes as piecemeal engineering, where changes are introduced gradually. “If they go wrong, the damage is not very great, and a readjustment is not very difficult. They are less risky, and for this very reason less controversial…. By using the piecemeal method we may get over the very greatest practical difficulty of all reasonable political reform, namely the use of reason, instead of passion … There will be a possibility of reaching a reasonable compromise …’Compromise’ is an ugly word, but is important for us to learn its proper use. Institutions are inevitably the result of a compromise with circumstances, interests, etc…”
I also agree wholeheartedly with John Harvey-Jones’ ‘Reflections on Leadership’: “Everything I have learnt teaches me that it is only when you work with rather than against people that achievement and lasting success is possible.”
The way forward for educational reform is to work together with students, parents, teachers, the social partners and civil society. What all these expect and deserve is a thorough soul searching and honest exercise to understand where we have failed in our educational strategy. We need to ask ourselves some tough questions, which will then help us, learn from our mistakes and chart the way forward. We should also learn from those countries that have successful education systems because if we want to thrive as a country we must create an education system that competes successfully with that of other countries in today’s globalised world.