Streaming has failed us

Although the practice of streaming children in our schools is sadly still with us, the case for continuing this counter-educational procedure should be as dead as a doornail. Promoting streaming in education for Malta today should be as morally bankrupt as championing apartheid. And yet the familiar hydra-headed arguments rear up in the face of years of research, experience and manifest failure.

Indeed, that streaming is a failed educational strategy is no longer an esoteric claim by some ivory-tower academic, or simply a "politico-semantic" exercise. It is plain fact, available for all to read from local bookshops.

In 2006, the 25th anniversary of the first Junior Lyceums, the Foundation for Educational Services and Allied Publications published Transition from Primary to Secondary in Malta: Time to Break the Mould? This book was authored by Drs Grace Grima and Josette Farrugia and edited by myself. It analysed 20 years of research into the effects of streaming and the Junior Lyceum exams in Malta.

This research showed that children are very much aware of the social connotations of streaming and selection processes. There are significant correlations between streaming and social class, gender and age. Wider links with the home background and parental education are evident as well. This means that learners are not being streamed according to a "natural" difference in ability, but according to other non-educational factors. The research showed that through streaming, those who need most support due to their social and personal circumstances receive the least.

Streaming negatively affects children's attainment of literacy skills. There are also clear indicators of undue exam-related stress on children that affect their behaviour, attainment and emotional well-being.

The analysis compared the Maltese educational system with 32 systems in Europe and around the world. It showed that Malta is the only country still hanging on to selection and segregation of students at the end of primary schooling. Ireland has recently abandoned this system because its vaunted accuracy in pin-pointing academically deserving students had been discredited.

Educational systems with higher degrees of segregation perform less well and show a wider disparity in performance between schools than systems with greater inclusion. Also, countries in which segregation occurs at a later stage perform better than countries in which students are segregated at a young age.

It turns out that Malta has one of the lowest ages at which segregation starts (age eight), and one of the highest degrees of segregation.

The result of all this is that although the portion spent by Malta on education is quite reasonable when compared to other EU countries, our educational attainment languishes at the bottom of practically all comparison tables, although recently we have begun to make big strides forward. Our self-employed are more than twice as likely as their EU counterparts to have no more than a secondary level of education.

Streaming has failed us. Because of it we have lost the opportunity to foster the skills and fulfil the dreams of thousands upon thousands of young people. In today's Malta, where jobs requiring little schooling are disappearing and jobs that require more and more complex competences are mushrooming, streaming is a costly anachronism. We need to have at least 85 per cent of our young people in post-secondary education, and we need them to be confident, self-assured, multi-lingual and multi-skilled, able to flexibly change, shape and create work, as well as to participate actively in the renewal of our society.

To do this we need to ensure that not just the chosen few succeed, but that all children succeed in fulfilling their potential. We need to tell parents that they are right in wanting only the best education for their children, but that this can be had in ways that prompt their children forward without pushing aside and marginalising other parents' children.

We need to show parents that neither the luck of the draw in Church primary school placements nor the ability to pay for private schooling releases them from their duty to be actively involved in their children's educational development.

We need to gently persuade all parents, especially those who feel helpless and valueless, that we believe in their ability and willingness to give this contribution, which will lead to their own development.

And we have in our hands today most of the necessary tools to make all this happen. The Curriculum is being reviewed; new schools are being built; new resources are being made available; teachers are equipped with new technologies and trained to use them to reach each learner. The new state colleges have the power to shape the educational experience they provide according to the needs of their students.

Streaming and examinations for segregation, the shackles that kept our 20th century educational system tied to its colonial and class-riven past, have no place in Malta's educational project for the 21st century. Our aim is to educate for the renewal of all our society, not for the benefit of the lucky few.

Let us not waste time arguing over the indefensible. It is time to quietly walk away from streaming, and to throw all our energies in ensuring that all our children succeed.

Mr Spiteri is Principal of St Margaret's College.