The new Reform Agreement is built on four principles: Quality, support, flexibility and accountability.

Quality

The first concern addressed by the agreement is clearly to ensure and sustain the effective provision of a quality education for all children. There are a number of major innovations in the agreement that address the issue of quality provision, the most important of which are highlighted below.

The agreement has gone a long way towards addressing the concerns raised in the 2005 Spiteri Report on Inclusive Education. Facilitators will be replaced by Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) who will assist class teachers to address children's holistic needs, from the physical to the educational. Special schools will be transformed into Resource Centres, and specialist Resource Workers may be engaged to address specific needs within Individual Educational Programmes (IEPs).

Moreover, the agreement recognises that in certain clearly defined situations, it is in the best interest of the child to be temporarily placed in learning support zones within schools and receive multidisciplinary attention. In rare cases, it would be in the best interest of the child to be temporarily placed in learning support centres outside schools, with the intention of reintegration. The present ex-Opportunity Centres will be phased out.

Early childhood education is also set to be transformed: Service providers in kindergarten (KG) will need to have a diploma as from 2010 and a degree as from 2015, effectively professionalising the service, which was a key recommendation of the 2006 Sollars Report on Early Childhood Education and Care commissioned by the Education Ministry. Profiling and portfolios will be introduced as from KG level, ensuring that the transfer to primary school is as smooth as possible.

There are also some important administrative changes. For example, primary school teachers will get 90 minutes per week on curriculum-related planning and work, which will effectively put them roughly on a par with their secondary school colleagues in this area of work.

There are some eagerly-awaited changes with respect to assessment. Apart from the portfolio and profiling throughout from KG right up to the school leaving age, the Year 6 annual exam will no longer be in February but will coincide with the Junior Lyceum exams, thus removing another anomaly that effectively reduced the final scholastic year of primary schoolchildren by half. Also, the half-yearly exams in both primary and secondary schools within the college can now be college-based. This means that teachers can collaborate in designing the exam papers, increasing their reliability and reducing the workload.

Finally, the agreement confirms the centrality of the role of the school in the community: Coordinators will be appointed to ensure that schools can function as community learning centres. The importance of school councils and student councils is confirmed. The agreement also confirms that schools are to organise two parents' meetings during the year, not one - this was the subject of a lot of debate during the 2006-07 scholastic year - and that one of them is to be in the evening to encourage the greatest possible participation by parents.

Support

The agreement counterpoints its emphasis on top-notch teaching and learning with a comprehensive support package of new measures at classroom, school and college level; the main ones are indicated here:

The roles of guidance - now changed to career advisers - and counselling are to be separated. Counsellors shall be college-based, catering for both primary and secondary schools, and there shall be a further new post of College Counsellor.

A new post, that of College Prefect of Discipline, shall ensure zero tolerance of unacceptable behaviour and the promotion of practices leading to appropriate social behaviour.

For the first time Youth Workers will also be employed, and they will give a valuable contribution to the multidisciplinary approach of learning support zones and centres.

All new staff shall go through an induction process, and all staff shall be mentored as necessary. This will ensure that quality assurance measures with respect to staff are based on the very same concept of assessment for learning that underpins the introduction of profiling and portfolios at all levels.

New administrative support is planned through the appointment of service managers, who are not necessarily teachers.

Legal and counselling services shall be made available to teachers and directorate staff with respect to issues related to their employment.

Flexibility

Of the four operant principles mentioned in the beginning that underpin the Reform Agreement, the one that is truly innovative, in the sense of being a major advance from the discourse of the FACTs Reform and the 2006 Amendments to the Education Act - although it is implied in both these documents - is that of flexibility. It is this flexibility that, coupled with the comprehensive support that is envisaged, will tap new energies and resources to ensure that the expected quality of teaching and learning is reached by all, according to one's potential.

On a macro level, it is significant that this agreement explicitly replaces all previous agreements and understandings, meaning that the directorates and the colleges will start with a relatively clean sheet with respect to work practices. Also significant is that all senior positions from that of head of school right up to director general are now open to all eligible educators, not restricted to state school ones, meaning that the pool of potential applicants has grown significantly.

This, coupled with the increased allowances for heads, should impact positively on the recent trend of a shortfall of suitable heads, and comes just in time to address an expected steep rise in vacancies in the coming years as the "baby boomer" heads start to retire.

Other aspects of flexibility are:

In the inclusion of assistant heads, heads of department, counsellors and inclusion coordinators in the categories of state school teachers who may apply for the roles of heads of school and education officers (EOs);

In the use by colleges of the time equivalent of the three in-service days and the three after-school professional development sessions that teachers need to participate in every year;

In the introduction of the concept of traineeship in the roles of counsellors, psychologists and career advisers. Trainees will be trained and mentored "on the job", and it is envisaged that this will address the present serious shortage of these professionals;

In the working conditions of some staff such as peripatetic staff, activity teachers, complementary teachers, school librarians, resource workers and school councillors, to ensure maximum service to the whole college and its local communities.

Accountability

Of course, flexibility needs to be counterbalanced with accountability measures. In this too the agreement is innovative, in that the management mode has shifted from the typically centralised "no action without permission" to the new freedom of action within clear parameters that is regularly assessed to ensure compliance and results. The main accountability measures in the agreement are outlined below:

Some roles such as college principals, assistant directors, principal education officers, college prefects of discipline, service managers and task officers come with performance definite-time contracts;

Heads of school who are no longer deemed suitable to lead a school can be reassigned to other educational roles that are within their competence;

The induction and mentoring of all officers that has been already mentioned is also an effective accountability measure;

Teachers' Performance Management Programmes and schools' Development Plans will be retained, and figure prominently in the external school audits that will now become a regular feature of school life.

The way forward

A reform agreement such as the one under review is by definition a negotiated compromise. In the circumstances this is a truly "historic" agreement, in that the new colleges and directorates can now realistically start to fulfil the vision of the FACTS Reform. It would therefore be facile to point out that more could have been done with respect to the original vision of the new 2000 NMC, although of course the NMC remains a point of reference for future revisions of this agreement.

This is not to say there are no potential pitfalls ahead. Key stakeholders still need to "come on board", as it were, and see the agreement as a great opportunity to address educational effectiveness issues that have long been festering without a solution. These stakeholders include teachers themselves, especially those who need to review their work practices and their perceptions of students' achievement and parental involvement.

Parents themselves need to understand how this agreement will impact where it really matters, in their children's well-being and their social and economic life chances.

Lastly, but most importantly, the pupils themselves need to be reassured that the proposed changes will be for their immediate and long-term benefit, and that they will be introduced smoothly and effectively.

The Faculty of Education is another important stakeholder that has been largely silent since the publication of the FACTS Reform in 2005. It has an indispensable role not only in supporting provision and quality assurance at various levels but also in taking on a "critical friend" role with respect to the educational authorities so that the new colleges and directorates remain true to their calling.

Another major challenge shall be the clarification of roles, complementarities and boundaries between, say, the college principal and the school heads, between the two new directorates and the colleges, and between the directorates themselves. These will in effect be forged and fine-tuned in the organic give-and-take of relationships between the actual persons who will take up these posts in the coming weeks and months. Many of these professionals would need to grow into a full understanding of how, say, mentoring gives guidance but also freedom within set parameters; or how the new directorates cannot be run on the old dictum of Floriana locuta, causa finita est if they are to allow the colleges to harness new energies to bring about the necessary changes. In all this the initial guidance of the Permanent Education Committee that is chaired by the minister will have a crucial role.

Lastly, we need to appreciate that a paradigm shift, which is what is being attempted here, takes time and may be bumpy. History tells us that old paradigms do not die without protest. We should expect some elements of misunderstanding, incomprehension, resentment and resistance. More than that, we should be well prepared for this, not to crush all dissidence, but to take the time to listen, explain and fine-tune as necessary. Never has it been truer that educational leaders need also to be learners. The FACTS Reform, embodied in the 2006 Amendments to the Education Act and enabled by the 2007 Reform Agreement, cannot be allowed to fail. Our children and their children deserve no less.

Mr Spiteri is senior executive at the Foundation for Educational Services.

(Concluded)