The Malta Union of Teachers said mixed-ability teaching had proven to be a failure as it welcomed the introduction of a “halfway form of streaming” known as banding. MUT president Kevin Bonello said the union would be learning more about the government’s plans tomorrow, when the Education Minister briefs the union’s council about the measure.
He was speaking to this newspaper in the wake of the controversy fuelled by the government’s decision to start grouping primary school children in Year 5 and 6 according to annual exam results as from the next scholastic year.
While the Opposition lashed out at the Education Ministry for re-introducing streaming with no consultation, lecturers at the University’s Faculty of Education also voiced their concern, expressing themselves puzzled by the decision to introduce “a less differentiated form of streaming”.
Asked for his reaction by The Sunday Times of Malta, the MUT official echoed the arguments made by the Education Minister earlier this week, saying that the proposal seeks to find a balance between streaming and mixed-ability teaching.
If implemented well, banding will be of great help to teachers and better than the present mixed-ability system
Mr Bonello said the union was never in favour of streaming, recounting that it had objected to the setting up of junior lyceums some 35 years ago, as these used to cater exclusively for high-achieving students.
“Unfortunately we moved from one extreme to another, as the current set-up is not geared towards mixed-ability teaching, which needs small classes and much more resources,” the MUT president argued. He said the plan is to have three separate bands according to ability “to make classrooms more manageable”. Mr Bonello pointed out that in reality this reform would only affect schools with a large population with several classes in each year.
“If implemented well, banding will be of great help to teachers and surely better than the present mixed-ability system,” Mr Bonello said. They had expressed themselves in favour of banding from the first time a ministry official floated the idea.
He said mixed-ability teaching was neither helping teachers nor students as the gap between the most gifted and those with learning difficulties was proving to be too large to bridge.
One of the arguments against streaming was that the system was primarily meant to make life easier for teachers, through a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Critics also argue that children in the lower streams would end up being labelled as failures and consequently drop out at an early age with very little chance success later on.
Mr Bonello rebuffed such criticism saying that “if life is easier for teachers, the quality of teaching would rise,” reiterating that it was “impossible” for teachers to cater for a wide spectrum of abilities simultaneously.
More often than not the pressure to cover the entire syllabus was leaving little time for teachers to focus on students with learning difficulties,” he said.
“Mixed-ability teaching has failed as it was not implemented within the right structure and with very little resources.”
He also argued that in secondary schools a milder form of streaming, known as “setting” had been introduced with some degree of success. Through this system children are grouped according to their ability in certain core subjects.
Probed about the concerns raised at University level, Mr Bonello replied that what carried most weight was that the overwhelming majority of teachers who had voiced concern said they could not come to terms with mixed ability.
“We need to get down to the practical level and get things working,” he said.