In its report to Education Minister Louis Galea, presented over 18 months ago, entitled 'MATSEC Review: Strengthening a National Education System' the MATSEC Review committee stated (p 51): "For most students, teachers, parents, examiners and administrators MATSEC examinations are associated with stress, 'headaches' and too much work."

It added that while any assessment by examination is bound to be stressful "it is important to avoid unnecessary stress and an unsustainable workload. (However) this is not happening." In fact it found that it came across "several instances of practices that increase stress rather than keep it within manageable proportions".

Ironically, the report (p 52) points out that "a lot of stress is self-inflicted. Large proportions of students... sit for ten, 11, 12 or more subjects at SEC level when, at most, only passes in six subjects at Grader 5 or better are required to qualify for post secondary education".

Why would parents inflict unnecessary stress on their children, who they no doubt love, one might ask?

As if to reply, the committee reported that, although parents describing private lessons (p 59) as "a chronic disease" in our education system, they insist that they are necessary "because the scholastic year is not long enough to cover the 'vast' syllabi at school". The committee adds: "Apparently, parents and students are prepared to accept the extra mental, physical and financial stress that private lessons induces because of the perception that students will be better prepared for the examination."

Referring specifically to the sixth form curriculum, the committee reports students and teachers describe it as "crammed" and that they do not find enough time to cover the subjects adequately. "The result is that the system produces students who can parrot answers but cannot think things out because there is not enough time for discussion in class, research in the library and reflection at home."

In other words, they complained that the education system not only results in stressed-out students; it does not even educate them well; they are just learning how to expertly regurgitate the knowledge thrown at them.

The committee commented that the claim that the curriculum is overloaded needed to be examined by comparing it to curricula followed by students at a comparable level in other countries.

The committee pointed to the damage that parents inflict on their children when they pressure them "to obtain the highest possible grade". It clearly warns: "...one must also consider the consequences of pursuing (the highest grades), including the stress, the anxiety, the cost and the wisdom of relying on private tuition for the extra coaching that is thought to guarantee success. There can be psychological consequences for trying very hard and failing to obtain Grade 1 or Grade A even when one still manages to obtain good grades."

It is not only students who find the MATSEC examination system stressful. The committee found that examiners are also suffering. Spot how many times the word 'stress' or words describing stressful situations or related symptoms appear in the following paragraph (p 55): "The stress is exacerbated by the limited summer holidays that they can take, if any. This pressure cannot be suffered over many years. Burnout, the need of a well-deserved rest after a strenuous academic year, and more rewarding academic pursuits have led to a number of university lecturers abandoning MATSEC, thus creating problems of finding qualified examiners in various subjects... In September, administrative staff experience extra stress due to the organisation of the resit sessions at the same time as dealing with the revision of papers exercise."

The Education Ministry's position

The Ministry remarked that stress is an inevitable consequence of examinations and that it was difficult to compare our situation with that of other countries.

The ministry referred to the MATSEC Review Committee's report and added that a report reviewing the 11+ Junior Lyceum entrance examination should be available shortly.

It said that both reviews were aimed at identifying the examinations' impact on the various stakeholders and recommending the way forward, particularly by focusing on ways of reducing stress resulting from "high stakes examinations".

An expert outsider's observations

Professor Roger Murphy of the University of Nottingham, UK, who has been extensively involved in similar student assessment systems of other countries, was invited by the MATSEC Review Committee to comment on the MATSEC system. His report features as one of the review committee report's appendices.

By way of introduction he highlighted the gap between the EU goal of having 85% of its school-leaving population participating in post-secondary education by 2015 and the Maltese government's own target of raising the percentage of students in Malta who go on to higher education to 30 per cent by 2010. "Such statistics raise all sorts of questions," he wrote.

He made various incisive comments on some "unique" characteristics of Malta's education system, including:

• The short school year: He said that compared with a wide range of other education systems in developed countries students in Malta are receiving a very low number of hours of schooling, and he recommended that this should be reviewed urgently;

• The emphasis on examination performance: The different education options offered to students depending on their examination performances at the ages of nine, 11, 16 and 18, meant that students were effectively being "weeded out" of mainstream education, he observed. He said the lower achieving students faced humiliation and neglect, resulting in them dropping out or playing truant;

• The very strong reliance on private tuition all through the years of schooling;

• The fact that student assessment and certification was dominated by traditional external examinations (as opposed to school-based examinations and continuous assessment).