The never-ending education debate

Streaming and the Junior Lyceum examination were raised recently at a business breakfast. This is a praiseworthy initiative as it brings into focus important national issues with education rightly being accorded top priority.

While acknowledging that the issue of selection was a passionate and controversial debate, the Prime Minister admitted that the matter needs further study. Words of wisdom indeed. Once again I find myself breaking a vow I made to myself many years ago never to discuss streaming or selection and, from time to time, in all honesty, I cannot resist breaking my pledge.

I must confess that my present stance in favour of some form of selective system in the primary and secondary sectors stems from the fact that in the late 1960s and early 1970s I contributed considerably to the national debate in favour of the total abolition of "selection by ability" and the immediate introduction of a comprehensive system of secondary education. Together with Paul Attard, president of the Malta College of Arts Science and Technology, I was massively aligned behind the MUT-backed movement being the main standard-bearer behind a very detailed report about this new fad.

The educational reforms of the early 1970s, when streaming in state schools was watered down and comprehensive schools introduced had an anti-egalitarian effect; they boosted the feeble private-education sector by driving young children, mainly from Malta's middle classes, away from state schools. Ten years later the exodus from state schools was further intensified with the result that state schools have never recovered from this set back. In no other country in Europe has state education been given such a massive vote of no confidence. Year after year we witness huge crowds swamping the Curia office to enroll their children in Church schools. It is a clear indication that, unlike my childhood days when government schools were supreme, in the perception of many parents all is not well in the organisation of state education. These parents are indulging in a subtle form of "streaming" by segregating their offspring from the other children in their community.

Whichever way you look at it, the state-Church/private schools divide in our educational system is profound, lifelong and socially and politically divisive. Non-streaming and the college system will only succeed where the whole social spectrum of society is represented; where there is no creaming-off. Why has the vast majority of the professional and business classes opted for private/Church education?

They have every right to choose what they consider best for their children.

God forbid if that democratic right is even questioned. But the state has every right to investigate this situation when education in the state schools costs the government much more than in Church/private schools.

I can only suggest just one reason for this state of affairs.

The teachers in state primary schools massively believe in further selection by ability, they crave for a better social mix in their classes and they are totally against a deterioration in standards to meet low achievement.

This is the main challenge facing our educational system; those who think otherwise will be missing the wood for the trees.