Secondary schools can now dedicate up to a quarter of classroom time to any subject they feel their students might need, according to the new National Curriculum Framework launched yesterday.
For the first time in Malta’s educational history, the long-awaited framework – which has been delayed by a year due to extended consultation – sets the minimum number of hours students are entitled to in various subject areas.
Individual schools are then left free to choose how to spend a certain number of “school-based” hours.
Education Minister Dolores Cristina said the aim of introducing these entitlement hours was to ensure students were provided with the basic skills that put them on the path of lifelong learning.
She said there was a strong element of flexibility so that individual schools could tailor their teaching according to the needs of their students. This entitlement approach will be implemented in State schools while Church and independent schools can consider adopting the system.
Kindergarten and primary schools will have to dedicate at least 60 per cent of learning hours to Maltese, English, maths and science and technology and will have 15 per cent school-based hours.
Religion and ethics education and health and physical education each get five per cent of the time.
When it comes to secondary school, the school-based hours increase to 20 per cent for Forms 1 and 2 and 25 per cent for Forms 3 to 5. The framework recommends referring to the secondary years, currently named Forms 1 to 5, as Years 7 to 11 “in line with the philosophy of a seamless curriculum”.
The new NCF, replacing the 1999 document when it comes into force in October of this year, groups the conventional subjects into eight learning areas to ensure coherent education. These areas include languages, mathematics, science and technology, health and physical education (such as sports and PSD), religious and ethics education, education for democracy (such as social studies, environmental studies), humanities (history, geography) and visual and performing arts (art, music, drama, dance).
The framework then identifies cross-curricular themes that should be present across all learning areas. These include literacy and digital literacy, education for sustainable development and education for entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation.
It also differentiates between three learning age groups and sets specific educational goals. The groups are: early learning years (kindergarten to Year 2), junior years (Year 3 to Year 6) and secondary years.
The NCF can be downloaded from the Education Ministry’s website, www.education.gov.mt.
Brief history of national curriculum
• The idea of a national curriculum is raised for the first time in the 1988 Education Act under the new Nationalist Government, at a time of a strong centralised education culture.
• The first national curriculum is published in the early 1990s, anonymously and without consultation.
• Education Minister Louis Galea sets up a committee to draw up a five-year strategic plan for its implementation.
• When the plan is completed, it faces objections from the Malta Union of Teachers over issues related to teachers’ working conditions and responsibilities.
• A “historic” government-union agreement is finally signed in 2007.
• The following year, a process gets underway to devise the new framework and in May 2011 it goes out for consultation, which is meant to last until the end of that year.
• However, more than 200 feedback reports are received and a working group is set up to go through the new proposals and amend the document.
• The NCF will now be implemented in the next scholastic year, overseen by a review board.
MUT boycotts launch
The Malta Union of Teachers yesterday boycotted the launch of the National Curriculum Framework in protest over a “mess” in the payments of supervision allowances owed since September.
Minister Cristina said she was sorry there had been problems but thought that the union’s decision was “disproportionate”. She said she would have liked the union to be present after it had contributed to the drawing up of the framework.
Union president Kevin Bonello stressed that the decision was not a political move but an industrial decision following repeated and “banal” mistakes in the payment of allowances owed to teachers who supervised students outside their working hours.
In a statement issued later, the Education Ministry said it was in contact with the union and those teachers whose claims were justified would receive the rest of their money by Tuesday.