The curriculum in government secondary schools is set for an overhaul, with new subjects to be rolled out in Form 1 from September and the number of weekly lessons increasing to 40.
A number of subjects which are optional at present will be merged and become compulsory.
Art and music will be integrated into a subject called Expressive Arts and two lessons a week will be dedicated to it. Another new subject will be Physical and Health Education, with five weekly lessons. This will be a merger of two present subjects, Home Economics and Physical Education.
Three lessons will focus on PE whereas the remaining two lessons will be dedicated to Design and Technology and Home Economics, on alternate weeks.
Between Form 3 and Form 5, Physical and Health Education will be reduced to three weekly lessons.
These subjects will include hands-on experience and will not be examinable at the end of the year. However, students will be assessed continuously throughout the year.
Personal and Social Development will include new content related to career development. A ministry spokesman said that a new syllabus and different forms of evaluation have been drafted to make the subject “more relevant”.
In order to accommodate these changes, the number of lessons will have to increase from 37 to 40 a week.
However, this adjustment will not affect the duration of breaks, as lessons have been shortened by about five minutes to 40 minutes each, in order to create the required time slots.
A ministry spokesman told Times of Malta that the three additional lessons in Forms 2 to 5 will be allocated by the school according to their particular needs.
Last February heads of school were instructed to consult with their college principals and with the human resources department to identify these subjects.
Another change that will come into force in September affects Form 3 students, who will have the choice to study Accounts, a subject that will make a return after a 21-year absence.
Earlier this year the government had announced a pilot project to introduce ethics for those students who sit out of religion lessons. This programme will be introduced in two primary and secondary schools.
A generation of students used to perform well in PE but were not sufficiently aware of the importance of personal hygiene
In his reply in a parliamentary question by Opposition spokesman Joe Cassar, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said these changes were introduced to address the needs highlighted in various reports, research and investigations carried out by local and foreign entities.
He added that the Department of Curriculum Management had held a number of discussions with teachers and parents and that college principals had also been consulted.
In his first reaction to the changes, MUT President Kevin Bonello told Times of Malta that this would be a learning curve and that it was too early for the union to pronounce itself.
He said some of the changes, such as the introduction of Physical and Health Education, were the result of the teachers’ feedback.
“We had a generation of students who used to perform well in PE but were not sufficiently aware of the importance of personal hygiene,” he said.
On the other hand, some teachers were concerned that 40-minute lessons would reduce teaching time as a significant amount of time would be ‘lost’ setting up the required teaching resources and for the students to settle down.