Last week’s TimesTalk programme was about the effectiveness of our educational system. The discussion questioned whether we should have a one-size-fits-all approach. The official representing the Ministry of Education kept using the metaphor of needing to provide different shoes for different students.

What does this mean exactly for this government?

The idea that different learners need custom-made ‘shoes’ for their different learning pathways sounds deceptively self-evident. The problem is that we have been there before.

Historically, the period when our primary and secondary education was sliced and diced in the greatest number of niches was at the end of the socialist era of government in 1987. We had five different kinds of State secondary provision, separation by age from kinder and separation by ‘ability’ from age eight. Extensive research has shown a clear correlation between this system of segregation, the most pervasive in Europe, and poor educational outcomes.

This is why the Nationalist administrations of 2003 and 2008 had charted a radically new course, which aimed at removing segregation within and between our primary and secondary schools. This was a massive undertaking requiring not only new physical structures and providing other resources but forging a new culture of learning and teaching.

The challenge is not to transform teaching but to construct enough niches to cater for students failed by the system

Here is the rub: this intended culture was based on inclusion. Best practice – including in Maltese State and non-State schools – was telling us to go for flexible teaching and learning environments in which children learnt together, at times in synch and at times at different speeds.

Different learning pathways in secondary level would not come in as props for educational failure but as valid options for personal fulfilment and maximum employability. Interim measures for specific categories of students were taken to address immediate needs but these were strictly focused on educational reintegration and it was always clear that these would have to be addressed once the whole reform was in place.

We know now that these reforms did not go far enough, mainly because the challenge of changing school cultures and teaching practices was underestimated. But since Education Minister Evarist Bartolo has retained the national curriculum framework and now finalised the learning outcomes framework, which embody this cultural transformation, this intended culture is the yardstick by which this government’s work in education must be measured.

Let’s see the record.

In the first year, this administration re-introduced segregation through the reclassification of classes by age and ability. In Parliament, the minister said this new segregation was a temporary measure until teachers received the necessary training. Yet, with three years of this legislature over we still have no plan in sight for how this culture change will take place.

How did the minister intend to introduce the learning outcomes framework without planning for sufficient training and support for teachers and schools? No wonder he was forced to postpone its introduction by a year and a half.

What we have instead is the gradual crystallisation of other forms of segregation. There is growing concern that the nurture groups, learning zones and the alternative learning programme are being misused to ‘park’ difficult learners, not to reintegrate them into learning. The opportunity centres have been reintroduced by stealth, with the introduction of a core curriculum programme that effectively runs parallel to mainstream secondary learning.

The government is giving a crystal clear message: the challenge is not to transform teaching but to construct enough niches to cater for students failed by the system. On the surface, the minister might speak of inclusion but in reality his actions address the symptoms, not the causes.

The culture change is not being addressed. Our students are not getting custom-made ‘shoes’, just the same old shoe of segregated schooling.

Therese Comodini Cachia is a Nationalist MEP.