From antagonists to partners

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Church-State agreement that brought to an end the Church schools dispute after years of simmering tensions that had culminated in all-out confrontation in 1984.

Who would have thought that 25 years later, Church and state authorities would be working hand in hand to reform compulsory education in our country in the interests of all schoolchildren in Malta?

To understand how this change came about we need to go back half a century. The introduction of compulsory primary education in 1946 and secondary education in 1970 were important milestones in ensuring equality of opportunity for all.

Yet the education system that mirrored, and in some ways accentuated, the social class divide was not questioned.

This was first attempted, albeit partially, by the 1972 education reform, which sought to provide greater equality of opportunity to Maltese learners by transforming state government schools into English-style comprehensive ones.

However, in spite of this noble ideal, the attempted reform has gone down in educational history as a failure – a classic example of bad planning and even worse change management.

Not only did it not succeed in providing a more level playing field in educational opportunity; it resulted in the flight of thousands of parents to non-state educational provision, especially to Church schools.

In the medium term it was the cause for the setting up of junior lyceums, opportunity centres, junior craft centres and other types of state schools. This led to the reintroduction of streaming in state schools at both primary and secondary levels and the institutionalisation of greater differentiation and inequality in educational provision than ever before.

By the early 1980s, Church schools found themselves embroiled in the government’s increasingly heated and polarising rhetoric on the need for equality of access and educational opportunity.

Although a case could be made that some aspects of the Church schools’ provision needed to be reviewed to address the issues of equality of access and educational opportunity, in the cacophony of recriminations, draconian action and vigorous protest of the early 1980s the possibility for fruitful and collaborative reform was lost.

The 1985 agreement did, however, have one crucial aftermath: Church schools decided to change the access system to their kindergartens and primary schools from one of selection by application, which was open to charges of favouritism and social discrimination, to an open ballot system.

This sent a strong message that the Church in Malta would no longer tolerate structural conditions within its schools that allowed for overt class divisiveness, but viewed the schools as vehicles for social development in line with its apostolic mission.

It is true that the ballot system led directly to the mushrooming of independent schools and thus to further differentiation based on the ability to pay. However, most of the independent schools were trailblazers in implementing effective strategies for differentiated learning and school improvement.

At a time when most Church and state schools were not yet in a position to overhaul their policies and practices, independent schools served the crucial function of incubators of ideals, ideas and staff who would later help transform the nationaleducational system.

Church-state relations regarding education started taking a new direction with the 1988 Education Act. In the late 1980s and 1990s some of the worst excesses in the differentiation in state provision started to be mitigated: streaming in state primary schools was removed in the lower years.

Opportunity centres for the lowest achievers, and trade schools and junior craft centres, which also catered for low achievers, were gradually integrated into mainstream schools. Junior lyceums became less academically elitist than originally planned.

In spite of these changes, however, the education system remained fundamentally aligned to the deterministic belief that the segregation of learners through differentiation within and between schools mirrored ‘natural’ differences in children’s abilities.

Despite research that clearly linked streaming and differentiation in schooling to inferior results, there was no official recognition that the structure of our education system and our schools was largely responsible for the general shortfall in attainment. The net result was that in almost all international indicators, our educational system was performing well below expectations.

The 1995 Wain Report by the government-appointed Consultative Committee on Education was the first semi-official document to radically challenge these assumptions.

It introduced the concept of educational entitlement and equity for all learners, which entailed a profound restructuring of schooling. This was enshrined in the 1999 National Minimum Curriculum and further developed in the 2005 government discussion document ‘For All Children to Succeed’ (Facts), and finally the 2006 Amendments to the Education Act. Facts argued that the country needed to move on from being satisfied at having achieved an education for all, to aiming for the highest quality of education for all.

It acknowledged that this entailed a new form of schooling that addressed the age-old differentiation within and between schools. The 2006 Education Act amendments set up a new college system that networked new-style state secondary schools with their feeder primary schools.

This meant that the differentiation between junior lyceums and state secondary schools, as well as streaming, would be removed. This reform is being implemented with care over a number of years; this year saw the last edition of the Junior Lyceum exams and the removal of streaming from Year 5 state school classes.

However, for the reform to really take root, the Church schools needed to come on board; otherwise the imbalance in provision, at least as regards boys’ education, would have remained.

In 2009, the Church boys’ schools decided to divest themselves of the Common Entrance exam system and to provide continuous schooling pathways from primary to secondary for boys as was already the case in most Church schools for girls.

This meant these Church schools were renouncing their status as first-choice schools for the cream of the crop of every year’s cohort of Form 1 boys, and accepting to educate secondary school students with practically the same range of abilities and realities as in state schools. It was a radical option for social justice and for equality of opportunity which few would have thought possible.

Now that state and Church schools share the same social and educational vision, new possibilities for cooperation and synergy are opening up. Facilitated by the quiet, practical and consensual approach of the Ministry for Education, state educational authorities and Church schools, in many cases in full collaboration with the independent school sector, are working on an increasing number of projects and initiatives that are set to impact positively on all school learners in Malta in the years to come.

Some of these include the new national curriculum framework, the upgrading of Church schools’ physical resources, the introduction of vocational education and training in secondary schools, a new end-of-secondary school certification system, a new national end-of-primary exam, and upgrading of teaching/learning resources, including for e-learning.

This is a new era of educational cooperation in which we have collectively started to put aside our colonial blinkers and classist preconceptions.

Of course, there is still so much more to be done; so many educational challenges raised by the ongoing reform that need to be addressed.

The only way such challenges can be overcome is if all stakeholders work together to implement a common vision for all children in Malta to succeed in being the best they can be, so that they may strive for a better future for our nation.

Mr Spiteri is director, Quality Assurance Department, Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education, Ministry of Education.

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