Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green party, has welcomed the latest development in the educational reform, under which benchmark tests have replaced the competitive Year Six entrance examinations.

AD education spokesman Mario Mallia said his party had “always supported the end of a selective system which divided students into different schools and which fuelled inequality”.

He said AD believed that the College system under which students from college primary schools would attend secondary schools within the same College was a step in the right direction.

Michael Briguglio, AD chairman and a lecturer himself, said the reform needed to be supported by adequate human and financial resources for schools to successfully implement these changes.

“AD strongly feels that this should be a national priority and that this positive and important educational reform needs to be nurtured carefully by the government through an adequate investment of resources to achieve this aim,” Mr Briguglio said.

Earlier this month, Education Minister Dolores Cristina announced that the benchmark test system would replace the oft-maligned Junior Lyceum and Common Entrance examinations, blamed for causing undue stress on the children taking them.

The new system will be focusing on assessing skills rather than memory and will serve to put students in secondary state schools in “sets” where students of a similar ability in a topic would be put in the same class. This replaces streaming, which was influenced by the average mark rather than individual skills.