St Theresa College principal Frank Fabri recently took the initiative of holding a meeting with teachers at Msida Primary to give them the opportunity to voice their opinions about the new educational reform.

Many of us feel strongly about the subject and are willing to help and contribute ideas to make this reform as effective as possible. Teachers are the main stakeholders in this reform because it is we who will have to eventually implement it in the best possible way, keeping students' needs in mind. Hopefully, our opinions will be given their due importance.

We feel the reform has been developed in the children's best interest. We want to implement the reform successfully in our classrooms, but in order to do so, we need financial and human resources. We are all in favour of giving our students "the best possible educational experience" (National Minimum Curriculum (NMC) p30) but for this to happen we need help. Only then would we really be able to say that we are working for all children to succeed.

The reform is needed and it will definitely remove a lot of stress from the students' and parents' shoulders.

It is extremely worrying that the current educational system, and the stress burden it fosters, creates situations where students ask questions such as "Ma, tibqa' tħobbni jekk ma ngħaddix?" (Mum, will you still love me if I do not pass the exams?) With the correct implementation of the new educational reform such questions would not need to be asked anymore.

Quoting from the executive summary of the Education ministry report Transition from Primary to Secondary Schools in Malta: A Review (p9), "Teachers claim that in the current system, the focus is on the core examinable subjects. They feel that as long as the current system prevails, they feel powerless and cannot do things any differently because in Year 6 high-stakes entrance examinations are still dominant."

We take this further by saying that not only does the current system limit Year 6 teachers, but also as early as Year 4, extracurricular activities are already carried out with caution and limited due to the importance placed on the main curricular subjects. It is already difficult to do extracurricular activities in Year 4, let alone in Year 6.

Implementing this reform is in the best interest of the child, but to fulfil this, other aspects must also be taken into consideration, namely:

• The syllabus content should be revised. Key topics should be identified, and irrelevant or unimportant topics should be reduced. A thorough consultation with teachers would help pinpoint the key topics and set aside areas which might have become irrelevant.

• The number of pupils in a class should be reduced to a maximum of 18. This would help teachers differentiate between pupils of different abilities. With current class numbers, it is almost impossible for a teacher to take into consideration all the pupils' needs and abilities, let alone spend a little time every day assessing and reflecting with and about each pupil.

• Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) should be given more opportunities to help class teachers reach out to all children, and to advance in their profession by specialising in various areas. This would increase the possibility of differentiating pupils in each class.

• We are all in favour of giving our students "the best possible educational experience" but for this to happen we need help. We believe that for the reform to work effectively, the government should invest in more human resources.

Employing a counsellor, psychologist, and other specialised staff in each college is positive, but it is not enough. Ideally, every school should have a number of teachers/child assistants (according to the school's population) to help out with differentiated teaching.

• Schools should be provided with more physical resources. Many smaller schools are finding it extremely hard to cater for students' needs because it is financially impossible for the school to provide the resources. With the new reform we have to be prepared to invest in resources, both in large and in small schools.

Parent training should be given major importance in the process of implementing the reform. Parents must be given the opportunity to attend meetings/lectures/work-shops about the new system and be trained in how to handle the children's new methods of learning and to understand that a stress-free system doesn't mean that the class is not being taught well.

The following are some points which the parents should be taught to help their children with their school life:

• Children should study for life and not for exams.

• Parents must follow their children's work even though the Junior Lyceum exam has been eliminated.

• Parents must not pressure their children to get high grades and top rank in class. They must help their children to love learning, for instance, by encouraging them to read and take interest in books.

• Parents must understand that some of their children might get different work, according to their abilities. This would be done to cater for the needs of all the children and give each child work they are really capable of doing.

We know that bright children who do well in non-memorising subjects do not do so well in Social Studies and Religion. This is because they have too much information that they have to learn by heart.

Another problem that does not help students/teachers is the lack of a proper Social Studies book. We end up giving students loads of notes to copy from the board, and this leaves us with very little time to explain, let alone develop a fun activity from which they would surely learn more.

The same can be said about the Religion syllabus. There are many chapters that are irrelevant to pupils' lives today, while others, such as the Nativity Story, are missing in Year 4. This occurs in most of the other year groups.

To echo this reform and the need for education for life, Religion and Social Studies exams should be based on common sense and information relevant to life rather than quiz-based questions. The vastness of the syllabus, especially that of Social Studies and Religion, does not let us "cater to the particular needs of specific students" (NMC, p30).

A possible solution to this would be to plan all the topics and skills that we want to impart to students in primary school, and then group them according to the year group and its benchmark: hence, there would be a number of basic skills taught at Year 1, which would be reinforced and built upon in the subsequent years, thus creating a structure of knowledge rather than separate strands.

The authors are teachers at St Theresa College's Msida Primary. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect those of the school.