Cabinet approves exams report

The Cabinet yesterday approved a report outlining long-awaited alternatives to the junior lyceum entrance examination system and a public consultation process is expected to start in the next few weeks, Education Minister Dolores Cristina has confirmed.

The document recommends the phasing out of the much-criticised streaming system and explores a method of transition from primary to secondary school, presently done through common entrance and junior lyceum entry exams.

Streaming - by means of which students are allocated to state junior lyceums or area secondary schools following a qualifying entrance exam - has long been debated and criticised primarily because it is believed to raise stress levels on 11-year-olds who sit the exams.

"Because it has been pointed out for a number of years that this is a most stressful situation, we are looking towards minimising stress on children, not by removing exams but by not allowing exams to be the only benchmark, the Minister said.

"We're also looking at the current system of streaming, which happens from a very early age and is a very selective and exclusive system in many people's opinion," Ms Cristina said.

Without revealing too much about the content of the report, the minister said it was compiled by a working group appointed by former Education Minister Louis Galea to examine the current situation and make recommendations.

Apart from addressing junior lyceum entry exams and streaming, the report also looks into the national minimum curriculum (NMC), which is due for updating, a ministry spokesman said.

Now that it has been approved by the Cabinet, the report will be put for public consultation. Within the next few weeks the Education Ministry will be releasing three versions of the report: one for teachers, one for parents and another for students.

The urgency for an overhaul of the education system was raised last month during a business breakfast on education organised by the Nationalist Party when the Prime Minister acknowledged the need for an in-depth look at streaming.

During the event, one of the main authors of the NMC, Kenneth Wain, said that junior lyceum and common entrance examinations should be abandoned because they were "discriminatory and socially unjust".