The recent policy decision by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo introducing “banding” in Year 4 and Year 5 of State primary schools is completely in line with his philosophy. In fact, when the death knell sounded for the elimination of streaming and the abolition of the entrance examination in September 2008, the minister quoted the Harvard guru George Santayana’s famous words in The Life of Reason: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The minister also reminded us of the concluding remarks made in the autobiographical publication entitled Malta in the Making by the late, erudite lawyer Edgar Mizzi, with reference to the introduction of comprehensive schooling in 1971: “The system was short-lived but the consequences were disastrous and the government secondary schools, where the system was tested, took a long time to recover”.
To put it bluntly, the comprehensive system resulted in discouraging excellence and undermining discipline. This is a lesson we must all learn for the good of our island home.
The minister does not walk alone in this very cautious approach. Two former directors of education, the late J.J. Camilleri and Horace Mercieca, both with hands-on experience as teachers in the primary and secondary schools, expressed their strong reservations in this newspaper when the streaming debate was raging five years ago.
I had assisted John Cameron, from the University of London, who had been commissioned to draw up a blueprint for a Comprehensive System of Education in 1969, and was invited to sit on the Malta Union of Teachers’ steering committee in order to submit detailed plans for the implementation of this system as outlined in Education circular 227/71 instructing head teachers in the State primary schools that “formal mid-year and end-of-year examinations are not to continue”.
This was followed a year later by the ground breaking edict: “The secondary school entrance examination is abolished and children will move from primary to an area secondary school.”
Four years later it was manifestly clear that this well-intentioned system had failed dismally. Paradoxically, it had an anti-egalitarian effect that boosted the feeble private education sector by driving young children, mainly from the middle class, away from State schools. In no other country of Europe was State education given such a massive vote of no confidence.
Wearing sack-cloth, 15 years ago, when the abolition of streaming loomed on the educational horizon, I initiated a national campaign in favour of the retention of streaming and the strengthening of the entrance examination by giving more ‘weighting’ to English and eliminating religion and social studies. I stuck out my neck on the national chopping block in the hope that past mistakes would not be repeated. Unfortunately, when the junior lyceums had established themselves and were showing very positive results, they were given a mortal blow in 2008.
The minister’s cautious attitude will, I hope, be extended to the re-introduction of the tripartite system namely the junior lyceum, the technical school and the trade school, with the possibility of transfer from one institution to another according to the grades obtained. It is well to remember that the closure of the dockyard has presented new challenges. Certain trades need to be taught in trade schools otherwise we run the risk of swelling the rate of foreign employment to the detriment of the Maltese worker.
This will ditch once and for all the mistaken egalitarian dogma of extreme leftist tendencies which even Communist Russia abolished in the 1970s with the introduction of the “Academic Olympiad”, the school that provided the USSR with the most advanced home-bred space scientists.
The minister does not walk alone in this very cautious approach
In these crucial moments of our educational history, the prophetic words of Professor A. H. Halsey, the great left-wing academic who pioneered educational priority areas in England, come to mind: “The essential fact of 20th century education history, is that egalitarian practices have failed.”
He advocated that quality education should no longer be a privilege but a right and an expectation, insisting on equal education opportunities for all but not equal education for all.
From personal experience, I can honestly say that the old system of selection has served the working class very well. Our hard-working education minister is echoing the words of the affable Tony Blair, blaring out loud and clear “Education, education and education”, in the full knowledge that nothing else will preserve our relative prosperity and social services in this technological age than quality education.
For some reason, the minister elected to name this new form of diluted streaming as “banding”. This new branding will hopefully deliver us from the bondage of the slough of despondency. With apologies to the Old Bard: “What’s in a name? That which we call streaming by any other name would smell as sweet.”