Vocational subjects will be added to the list of O level topics for students who do not fit into the “Matsec funnel”, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo told Times of Malta.
From the next scholastic year, fifth form students will be able to sit for O level exams in hospitality, engineering and social and community care to make school “more relevant”, he said.
The Matsec examination board, which sets and grades exam papers, had been extended to include representatives from the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology and the Institute of Tourism Studies, Mr Bartolo added.
“Our biggest challenge in education is making school more attractive. Forcing students to sit for subjects they are not cut out for and then branding them as failures is just pushing them away.
“These new courses will give students alternative but not inferior routes.”
Documents seen by this newspaper show that more than 350 State school students did not register for a single O level last year, making up more than 10 per cent of the 4,500 fifth formers to finish secondary school. The new educational route will not stop there. Once registered with Mcast and ITS, students would be able to study for their A levels and even follow undergraduate courses in the vocational paths, Mr Bartolo said. The new courses are not the only measures to be introduced to improve student performance either. The minister said the six-month Alternative Learning Programme, targeted at students who have not signed up for any SEC exams, would be a year-long course this year.
Rolled out last January, the programme attracted some 220 of the 350 O level dropouts, only half of whom, however, finished the course.
Mr Bartolo said students not interested in sitting for any SEC exams would be asked to join the programme by their teachers at the start of their final year of secondary school.
“We do not want to have any dead-end education. When I first took office I found a lot of cul-de-sacs,” he said.
One such example of an educational impasse, he added, were the foundation courses offered to students who had not attained the minimum requirements to enrol in colleges.
“These students are often just repeating the subjects which had driven them away in the first place. We are changing these to make them more accessible and more relevant to students.”