Lecturers at the University’s Faculty of Education are puzzled and concerned by the Education Minister’s decision to reintroduce streaming/banding into the primary educational system.

State primary schools received a circular informing them about changes to be reintroduced in the next scholastic year.

Pupils in Kinder 1 to Year 4 would be grouped by month of birth while in Years 5 and 6 the criterion of grouping children would be in line with the overall level of achievement in their annual exams in Maltese, English and maths.

Banding is a “less differentiated form of streaming”, the 27 lecturers say in an open letter to Evarist Bartolo.

Many experts, they continue, consider banding an imperfect method that cannot be carried out at school level, where numbers are too small for it to work reliably.

This negative effect has been studied locally and internationally and is well known

The lecturers highlight “three worrisome elements”. The first is that, in a selective system, such as the one being advocated, the younger born children will not have the opportunity to benefit from learning with slightly older peers, born in the same year.

Their teachers would be unlikely to cover the same curriculum as the teachers of their ‘older’ peers. They will, therefore, be far more likely to be engineered into the lower bands or streams in Years 5 and 6 and thereafter.

“This negative effect has been studied locally and internationally and is well known.”

The second concern is that the decision to abolish streaming in primary schools was taken three years ago following a wide consultation process that was consensually accepted by stakeholders.

“There has been too short a time to determine whether the 2011 change has been beneficial to the achievement of individual pupils and to national achievement.”

Quoting a number of international studies, which strongly advocated against ability grouping, the lecturers say that the performance of less-academically able students in homogeneous classes tends to be below that of this latter group in heterogeneous classes.

“The factors which have led to what the minister calls ‘a crisis’ in educational achievement are, in large part, attributable to the selective system of the recent past, in which grouping by date of birth and streaming in the primary school were major pillars.

“This most recent reversal of a barely three-year-old policy does not allow the educational system to serenely adjust to a system that ensures a high level of achievement of all pupils.”

On the issue of “exerting a degree of gender balance”, given girls’ higher achievement locally and internationally, it can only mean that, despite their better achievement, girls will be allocated to classes with pupils of lower achievement, the lecturers note.

The letter refers to a “serious social justice “It is known that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds... are those most likely to be in the lower bands. Moreover, immigrant children without one or both of the two official languages will likewise be placed in bands that are less able.”

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.