Non-streaming is doomed to fail, no matter what they say.
Government is removing streaming, the Junior Lyceum and common entrance examinations, and it will take a lot of energy to convince the parents and the teachers that this measure will this time be a success.
This reform was introduced by Labour in 1972, amidst strikes by teachers and students in protest against the removal of streaming, and the opposition of the Nationalist Party at the time. It was a failure and was subsequently abolished. Now it is being re-introduced, as of 2011, by the same party who opposed it almost 40 years ago – only this time the Nationalist government claim that the exams are not being removed in a hamfisted way, as Labour did in the 1970s.
No wonder that parents and teachers alike know that the system is going to fail again, and the reason is the same: for non-streaming to be a success, teachers must be convinced about it because they are the ones who have to sell the product. And the problem is that the teachers are very sceptical about it because their intensive curriculum does not allow them time to cater for different levels of students. They cannot tailor the curriculum to students with difficulties; they need to be trained to cater for differentiated teaching and learning, and they need time to do this. But the bottom line is this will not allow them to cover the curriculum.
Studies upon studies have been carried out, stating that streaming is linked to behavioral difficulties and all studies conclude that the National Minimum Curriculum and the streaming system should be reviewed. Let us face it: policies always start from research studies, and our problem is that we think that the policy makers are only those who dictate the policy. The reality is that for a policy to be a success all the stakeholders have to be involved. This means that even the teachers and the parents have to be convinced that non-streaming is better .
Both Church and State have agreed on the removal of the entrance examinations as of 2011, and the Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education and the Maltese Episcopal Conference were reported to agree with this measure.
This means that in Church and State schools, streamed classes will make way for mixed ability classrooms – i.e., no streaming – without assuring us that the teachers are prepared to give lessons and have the necessary skills and resources to cater for differentiated teaching and learning.
At first I admit I found it very strange for the Church to agree with such a move, and at the same time invest heavily in the building of new schools, when it knows that parents do not like to send their children to schools which have non-streamed classes. But when I read that the government is still pledging to pay the Church teachers’ salaries, then everything fell into place: Church and State are up to something, and I will not be surprised if in the near future the State will be farming out education to Church schools.
What this means is that the rich will be able to send their children to private schools with streamed classes, and the poor and the middle-class will have to make do with what is available.
How the system will work now – when we already know that it did not work before – I have no idea. And how can the Faculty of Education from Tal-Qroqq, or the Education department in Beltissebh, set parents’ minds at rest that history will not repeat itself?
Grace Grima, the Director of Quality and Standards in Education, assures us in one of her recent contributions in a daily newspaper, that this development cannot be separated from the introduction of a number of important initiatives: the core competencies policy, professional development for educators, major recruitment in the education sector, especially focusing on student service, the setting up of learning support zones and nurture groups, plans for the introduction of vocational subjects at secondary level, the building and refurbishment of schools, the investment in eLearning, the review of the school audit system and the special schools reform.
I will leave it up to your readers, especially the parents and the teachers, to tell us if they are being given professional development, if major recruitment is being done, if learning support zones and nurture groups have been set up, and if vocational subjects have been introduced at secondary level. What I do know is that the Department of Education is recruiting unqualified persons as facilitators in our primary schools, and providing them with the necessary training and tuition after (not before) they are so employed.
Ask the teachers to tell you if the system is going to work. After all the success or failure of the system depends on them, and not on the academics and the policy movers. Unless the Education Department gives the teachers the necessary skills and tools to reach all the children in class, it is useless to preach to the converted when the converted already know that they will not be able and do not have enough time to deal with the A, B, C or D or even E students at once.
Imagine that if an A student takes one minute to understand an equation, and the E student takes one hour. What is the A student going to do in the meantime? How can the teacher concentrate on the A, and on all the other levels of students in one class? We do not want to hear the answer from the Education Department or from the Faculty of Education in Tal-Qroqq, we want to hear the answer from the teachers themselves or at least from the MUT, their union.
I can quote you one example of the distribution of fruit in our primary school under the EU scheme – the pupils have 15 minutes to eat the fruit and at the stroke of the 15th minute people come to collect the containers. The teachers are finding it hard to make sure that all pupils have their fruit in 15 minutes because they do not all eat at the same pace and at the same time. Nor are given more time, as it will prejudice their performance in covering the curriculum.
Now if teachers are unable to do even this, how can they be able to manage all levels of students at the same time and for the same restricted time?
Even parents are at a loss because they are being kept in the dark: they do not want their children to be scapegoats as we all have been, whenever a change was introduced to the curriculum or the educational system. The past experience on the removal of streaming does not give them any courage that this time it will be different.
The Education Department speaks of involving all the stakeholders in this so-called education reform, but unless it has the support of the teachers, the reform will once again fail.
Students will suffer and the poorer parents will have to start saving to send their children to more private lessons.
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