Real curriculum reform requires all stakeholders' participation

A revised curriculum framework calls for an organic vision and a feasible strategic plan. The new curricular vision ought to be cleaned of its current contradictions and be clear in its goals. We cannot afford to keep falling between two curricular stools, or continue to believe that we can square the curricular circle.

Currently, the local curriculum experience is informed by a strange hybrid of inclusive and elitist structures and practices. Local researchers have empirically linked achievement to educational structures and curriculum experiences. They have repeatedly shown how our education system is in part responsible for the inequalities that define educational outcomes at the end of the compulsory school system. They have also indicated that lack of achievement in the compulsory years is one of the main roadblocks to lifelong learning. Both insights are instructing us that we cannot expect to consolidate our positive results in higher education unless we transform our exclusive school system into a genuinely democratic space.

Our education system not only discriminates structurally by reproducing an 'apartheid' culture through rigorous selective practices, but also fails to provide a quality support system that reaches all pupils. The support system for our children is overburdened and overstretched. Even worse, the support system for teachers is virtually non-existent.

The system is shortchanging both 'under-achievers' (sic) as well as 'achievers' (sic); the former by failing to equip them with the basics, while the latter by providing them with the illusion that a bagful of certificates is tantamount to good education. Unfortunately, for several years, the depleted staff within the Department of Curriculum at the Education Division, held the fort and kept the syllabus wheel turning.

Real curriculum development and design, based on the objectives of the National Curriculum, was lacking. As a result we are still firmly rooted in a curriculum model that is heavy in content, repetitive, both within and across subjects, highly compartementalised and transmission-oriented. The curricular experience is also plagued by pockets of irrelevance. Sporadic attempts at integrating and rationalising knowledge, as suggested by the National Curriculum of 1999, were often met with displays of territorialism.

Thanks to the Government-MUT agreement, the layer of educational officers has recently been repopulated and reinforced. As a result, the capacity for real curriculum development has been reclaimed. The review of the national curriculum framework should aim at a rationalisation of the content and the provision of a curricular experience that is developmental, emancipatory, empowering, coherent, inter-disciplinary, self-fulfilling, community-oriented, praxial, flexible and motivating.

The curricular experience should be conceived of as one whole rather than as a series of free-standing episodes. This calls for educational officers, subject co-ordinators, teachers, curriculum specialists, researchers and other stakeholders to work together, as curriculum teams, in the process of curriculum design, development and evaluation.

Assessment is one of the major stumbling blocks to genuine inclusion and further education. The reform in this crucial sector of the education process failed to take off. Formative assessment is still a marginal experience within our education system. Both the 11 and the Sec exams have a disabling effect on many students and, unfortunately, both are fashioning what happens within the classrooms in terms of pedagogy, teacher-student relations and knowledge production and consumption.

Hopefully, the review of the curriculum will bring about a paradigm shift in this area. Policy makers in education should consider a possible scenario where all students are profiled throughout the schooling phase rather than examined at the end of their compulsory years. Such a process would be school-based and monitored by the Directorate responsible for curriculum.

On streaming, I am convinced that authentic inclusion calls for de-streaming. However, the de-streaming process calls for a strategic plan that should be owned by all and transparent. Reforming by stealth or limiting reform to suit the electoral ambitions of a minister are antithetical to a solid curriculum-reform process. With a 40-year history of half-baked reforms, U-turns, self-serving decisions, and party and politician-driven changes within the system, the culture, support system, organisational, managerial and leadership capacity, pedagogical expertise and resources are way off what I consider as the optimum level of readiness for a fully comprehensive system.

Curriculum reform cannot take place without the full participation of all stakeholders. I call on teachers to be assertive and actively engaged in the curriculum reform process. As important providers of education services, the Church, the private sector and the Faculty of Education also have a major role to play at all levels of the review.

I sincerely hope that the curriculum review will see an end to the politics of engaging people 'tal-fiduċja'.

Does Education Minister Dolores Cristina have the spine to be different?

The need for continuity

Fr Patrick Magro, SJ
Fr Magro is rector, St Aloysius' College

Continuity between primary and secondary education is one of the greatest challenges in our country at the moment. It ensures that pupils do not have to go through a selective process to move ahead in their education and it allows students to be educated holistically, not only in academic subjects but also in their human and spiritual development. It also means teaching staff and those working in educational management team up and work together.

This is precisely why St Aloysius' College, Birkirkara, this year took the difficult but important decision to integrate Stella Maris School, Balzan, so that the college is now made up of a primary school, a secondary school and a sixth form.

Continuity would definitely benefit all Maltese students and it is worth the effort.

No consultation with MUT

John Bencini
Mr Bencini is president, Malta Union of Teachers

The Malta Union of Teachers has a representative on the National Curriculum Council (NCC). Before the general election last March, the then Minister of Education had launched a review of the curriculum and the NCC was not even officially informed.

The council has not met since then and no consultation whatsoever has taken place in the meantime.

This is unacceptable for the MUT. Our position re the curriculum and other educational matters were clearly laid down in the MUT memorandum presented to all political parties prior to the general election.

This may be viewed at www.mut.org.mt.

Prof. Borg is former dean of the University of Malta's Faculty of Education.