Exams 'spoiling children's youth'

The amount of work that pupils have to do to prepare for exams is cheating them of their childhood, the Commissioner for Children charges in her first annual report.

Junior Lyceum and Church school common entrance exams are well-known for placing intense stress on pupils and their families, Sonia Camilleri says in a chapter outlining what schoolchildren told her in visits she made to more than 40 schools.

"Ten has become an age that families are afraid of, because it means that the exams have arrived. Children are being deprived of a year of their lives because they have to cut themselves off from sports, play and other activities at such a young age to study, if not also to attend private lessons.

"Those children who have already managed to get into a Church school or entered a private school are considered lucky because they can do without these exams."

State school children sit for Junior Lyceum entrance exams at the end of primary school, to determine whether they go on to the high-standard Junior Lyceums or ordinary secondary schools. In addition, a lot of them, as well as many children from Church and private primary schools, sit for the common entrance exams in a competition for much sought-after places in Church secondary schools.

The Commissioner calls for a new system to be found to replace these high-stakes exams, referring in her report to the national minimum curriculum's proposal to have a mix of exam-type "summative" assessment and "formative" assessment which is done throughout the school year.

But the entrance exams are not the only type that the commissioner complains about. At a later age, the Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) exams, taken at the end of secondary schooling, "continues to spoil our children's youth because they require an exaggerated amount of work, to the extent that other countries have been amazed".

This, she says, emerged clearly from a World Health Organisation survey which showed that Maltese children, along with those of two other countries, suffered the most stress from schoolwork and homework.

Private lessons come in for some especially sharp criticism from Ms Camilleri.

"Class lessons are being repeated in 'private' lessons which are not private at all because the number of students is at times equal to or higher than in a school classroom." Often, she adds, it is the class teacher him/herself who teaches the private lesson.

It appears, she says, that school lessons are either not valid or parents have got so used to the system that they send their children to private lessons simply because their childrenís friends attend them. "The result is that children have so much work to do that schoolwork ends up suffering."

Ms Camilleri points out that Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have a right to recreation. But it is often teachers and even parents themselves who encourage them to withdraw from all extra-curricular activities during the last two years of schooling in order to concentrate on the exams.

"This is the situation in many Junior Lyceums and Church schools," she says.

"Where has our children's youth gone? What will they remember when they grow up? How is this vicious circle of double lessons in each subject to be done away with?"

Commenting on other aspects of the educational system, she points out that:

¤ Many positive initiatives have been taken over the last few years, ranging from those that led to the drawing up of a new national minimum curriculum in 1999 to those taken to put its principles into practice. However, many principles have yet to be fully implemented.

¤ Streaming, which is carried out from the age of eight in State schools, undermines pupils' self-esteem and goes against their rights.

¤ The school leaving certificate is not reflecting the abilities of students, and therefore carries little value.

¤ Personal and Social Development, lessons in which students learn how to face the realities of life, is not being given the importance it deserves.

¤ Media education is non-existent in State schools, assuring that "everything learnt in school and at home will be lost, as children will end up behaving according to what they see on TV and the internet".

¤ Many students from area secondaries leave school with no academic certificates and with no basic trade skills, meaning they are prepared neither for the world of work nor to continue training.

The office of Children's Commissioner was created in 2003 and Ms Camilleri is the first to occupy the post.

She was appointed in December of that year.

Among her roles are the protection of children and youths, the promotion of children's rights and the provision of services to children.

In her report she also deals with justice and health in relation to children, as well as making recommendations for changes to the Children Act and to policies on child migrants.