Much has been said about the many students leaving compulsory education without the necessary basic skills. The educational authorities, rightly so, have been airing concern and studying possible short- and long-term solutions.

From experience, such solutions often result in initiatives that either add to the already long list of teachers’ responsibilities without adequate support or promote pull-out remedial courses that attempt to address particular needs.

Both solutions are problematic insofar as providing better educational provision with the welfare of the learner at its centre.

While the first can result in reform fatigue and teachers’ alienation and disengagement, the second offers ethical and ideological challenges.

Pull-out solutions, while one can see some academic benefits for some students with specific needs, need to be guided with a strict protocol and rigorous criteria to prevent any permanent structure being instituted simply because it is often seen as an easy way out to solve the issues arising from a reality marked by diversity of needs.

Pull-out solutions are often marred with a quick-fix mentality to solve challenging behaviour and/or classroom management issues.

Research suggests that inclusive solutions can result in a number of gains to all students.

Some might ask: what are the alternative solutions that can help attend to the challenges teachers face in the daily pursuits of their professional interactions.

Most teachers today are trained not only in the subject matter but also in differentiated pedagogies. In my experience, teachers in State, Church and independent schools are very committed to their work and very capable in what they teach.

It is therefore unwise to continue with policies that, instead of capitalising on this commitment and expertise, burden teachers with demands that often are left to their own devices to apply.

In my opinion, schools would benefit more if they had to invest in their teachers’ expertise by offering structured support to appraise the strengths within the teaching community and cultivate the already-existing expertise.

Most teachers are willing to go the extra mile as long as they see value in the reform and as long as they are offered tangible support and guidance.

Research suggests that inclusive solutions can result in a number of gains to all students

I therefore believe that a more viable option would be to provide teachers with opportunities to share and discuss specific issues of classroom management, curricular challenges and/or any other challenges that teachers meet in pursuit of their daily duties, with a coach who could advise, support and/or suggest specific strategies that could be beneficial to specific students.

This approach would benefit both the student in need and the class teacher, who would continue to build his/her repertoire of teaching strategies and support.

Such an option will also boost the teachers’ self-worth because any positive results would be attributable to their own interventions, not an external agency.

This option, which we already experienced in the work of the Let Me Learn team with schools, would require the training of professional educational coaches.

The role of an educational coach would be to help teachers, in particular novice teachers, improve instructional performance.

The main expertise of such coaches would be in profiling learners’ learning preferences, differentiated teaching and teacher support.

The coach seeks to influence the teacher’s way of thinking about instructional events.

S/he seeks to help the teacher recognise the antecedents leading to a specific classroom situation, the teacher’s intervention or response to the situation and the consequences that follow the teacher’s response.

Through this active reflection, the teacher and coach can discuss alternative approaches and responses to similar situations.

I believe that, through a personalised intervention approach, the teaching community would be enriched.

Such an approach would augment the teacher’s expertise and commitment and allows the classroom teacher to act in an inclusive, yet effective approach to the benefit of all learners.

Obviously, this does not preclude the need to provide for continuous professional development so that, from time-to-time, teachers would be able to continue developing their professional knowledge and skills.

These will be provided as continuous professional development options that would allow teachers a choice of a number of courses they would identify as being significant for the development of their service to the learners.

Colin Calleja is unit coordinator for inclusion and access to learning at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Education