(Adds minister's reaction)

The Opposition this morning made a plea for consultation on educational matters and called for a national conference to discuss the way forward with stakeholders on how to address shortcomings.

Addressing a news conference outside the Education Ministry, Opposition spokesman for Education Joseph Cassar accused the government of forging ahead with big reforms without consultation.

This, he said, was a dangerous way of doing things.

The minister, he said, did not listen and came up with three big changes that touched upon three educational pillars in the past year, namely the introduction of co-education, middle schools and streaming.

Dr Cassar said that as spokesman for education, the minister used to speak about reform fatigue but his method of doing things was leading to worse risks, which were unplanned and unmonitored reforms.

He said that about two weeks ago, the minister sent a circular to state primary schools telling them that, where possible, children should be grouped according to their annual results in Maltese, mathematics and English.

This was just one example of the minister forging ahead with changes to the inclusive education system without waiting for the outcome of a report it commissioned and which was being carried out by the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education. This circular, Dr Cassar said, took a lot of people by surprise.

He also criticised the manner in which co-education was introduced. At one point there was a pilot project and the government was meant to wait for the report to come out to see the outcome. But before the report was put together, he rolled out the reform across all state schools with no consultation.

Dr Cassar said he was also concerned at the way the concept of middle schools was introduced. The Opposition was not opposed to middle schools but to have children in three different buildings was not ideal.

All this, he said, was creating angst in parents and the people who would suffer were the students.

IT'S BANDING, NOT STREAMING, MINISTER SAYS

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said later that what was being introduced was banding, not streaming.

Moreover, it was not being imposed but schools were being given the option to use it as one of their tools.

Mr Bartolo said that over the years teachers had been struggling with mixed ability classes and this factor could not continue to be ignore. In the end, students suffered when teachers struggled, he said.

Reacting to Dr Cassar's call for consultation, he insisted that the government had been consulting and had held meetings with schools and teachers, who were, after all, the front runners.

He said that if Dr Cassar wanted to hold a conference about mixed abilities, he would attend.