Few could dispute the fact that our educational system has been underperforming for more than four decades as evidenced by Malta’s very low placing in the EU league of educational achievement for students leaving secondary school.
It is therefore logical to expect the education authorities to come up with a reform programme to overcome the weaknesses in our educational system – shortcomings that are a threat to our economic and social future.
What many find unacceptable is that the education authorities are churning out reforms without having first identified the root cause of the serious underperformance in primary and secondary schools.
One needs to ask why the Ministry of Education is flying blind in its enthusiasm to speed up reform without first establishing the causes of failure. Relying on hunches or anecdotal evidence is a dangerous attitude in such instances.
The latest development in the public debate on education reform started off in semantic vein when a number of academics accused the ministry of re-introducing streaming by stealth. The Minister of Education insists that what he is introducing is “banding” and that “banding is not a new word for “streaming”.
The large number of professors and doctors that form part of the University’s Faculty of Education came out with a strongly-worded open letter addressed to the minister condemning the reintroduction of streaming claiming that “we have 30 years of local and international research which strongly advocates against ability grouping of the type proposed (by the Ministry of Education)”.
The Malta Union of Teachers is backing “banding” but opposes “streaming”. What many find disappointing is that parents and employers did not make their voices heard in this debate. Many would agree with American educator Francis Keppel that “education is too important to be left solely to the educators”.
There are, surely, parents, teachers and employers who support streaming because the results they see from the current system are simply unacceptable.
Who could dispute the fact that a large number of our students still cannot read and write after leaving secondary school? Why are so many of our students choosing the soft options when deciding on their future studies at the University rather than going for the tough courses that open the doors for better employment prospects in future?
We need to ask ourselves whether we have ‘dumbed down’ our educational system by lowering standards so that practically everyone will be able to achieve some form of educational success.
Ensuring that our education system is based on inclusion and social justice should always be a priority. But we must also be ambitious when setting standards of achievement for our young people who need to be well prepared to face the harsh realities of finding decent employment in the modern economy.
Our education system must ensure that every student achieves his/her full potential and is not held back by systems that give more importance to egalitarianism than the achievement of excellence.
Until we engage in serious soul searching to discover what is behind our poor educational achievement levels, we cannot be sure that the proposed reforms are the best ones.
Introducing reforms by fits and starts, opposing reforms because they do not fit within the parameters of current mainstream academic thinking and not listening to all stakeholders in the education system are not the best way forward for educational reform.