The recent launch of the long-awaited proposal to reform the transition for primary to secondary schooling in Malta, popularly referred to as the 11+ reform, has, as was to be expected, generated wide media and public interest. After all, this is the most important change directly affecting compulsory teaching and learning for 35 years.

It tackles head-on issues such as streaming and selective exams that had been the bug-bear of teachers and parents for many years, and the topic of countless seminars and endless discussions.

Indeed, after the unsuccessful attempts to come to grips with streaming and selective exams in the 1997 and 1999 drafts of the new National Minimum Curriculum, some had despaired of ever addressing these issues in an effective manner.

Unexpectedly for many, the proposal managed to bring together educational debate on the transition processes of both the state and the non-state sectors. Perhaps the big surprise in the proposed reform is that the leaders of the Church and its schools have agreed to abolish the Common Entrance exam for entry into Church schools for boys, citing the need to be of service to those who most need the Church's assistance.

Therefore, the reform proposal may be seen not just as an educational choice, but also an ethical one, that promotes social justice by ensuring that every boy and girl in Malta fully benefits from their right to be provided an education of the highest quality.

The reform proposal has a number of key points that need to be understood clearly, so as not to be mistaken for the ill-planned educational earthquakes that rocked families and schools in the 1970s.

Firstly, the Junior Lyceum exam is going to be transformed in two years' time into a set of three national benchmark assessments in Maths, Maltese and English that will still be centrally set and corrected, down from the present five that include Religion and Social studies. These will be complemented by school-based assessments. These exams will take place at the end of the Year 6, meaning two months will have been gained over the present Year 6 exam system.

The proposal has a number of other advantages. Under the present system, same-year resits are not possible - students failing one exam can only resit all five exams the following year. Unsurprisingly, many lose momentum, and end up failing more than the original one exam.

Now, for current Year 5 and 6 pupils - that is, before the reform is fully in place - there will be the possibility of a resit at the end of August if they fail one exam. This means that within a month of receiving the results, pupils will be able to resit the exam and still enjoy three weeks of their summer holidays.

Crucially, the national benchmark assessments will have a diagnostic function, not a selective one. This means all those who sit for these exams will go to the same high-quality state secondary school, which will provide a different curriculum from the present junior lyceums and area secondaries.

Thus, these exams will not be used to label about 50 per cent of state school students as 'failures' because they did not pass the exams, as is presently the case. Instead, they will be used to gauge what the pupils have mastered and what they need to learn next.

The national benchmark assessments will have another innovation: the inclusion of an oral component. This is already present in the Secondary Education Certificate (Sec) language exams, and will now be extended down to the primary level.

As already indicated, the removal of the old-style Junior Lyceum exam will be matched with the removal of the Common Entrance exam in two years' time. This will mean Church secondary schools that previously admitted boys through this selective exam will have to find other ways how to do so that are not selective. There are a number of options available that will be considered by the individual schools as befits their autonomy and individuality.

The other great reform is the elimination of streaming, which groups learners in classes according to their perceived abilities through test results. Over the past few decades, various studies, including large-scale ones that compared educational systems and results of many countries around the world, have shown that systems that differentiated their learners most got the least positive results.

Malta is one of the countries that differentiates the most and the earliest through streaming at the age of eight. It is not surprising we rank towards the bottom in most EU educational comparison scales.

And yet we live a quixotic situation whereby mixed ability teaching is considered impossible in state schools but being successfully practised down the road by Church girls' schools as well as independent schools.

This anomaly will be the first to be addressed: this year's Year 4 will not suffer the usual debilitating separation in September 2009 into Year 5 classes according to exam results, but will remain in mixed ability classes.

In secondary schools, streaming will be replaced by 'setting', at least in the core subjects. Setting means that students are grouped according to their ability in the respective subject, so that they may be in a high-ability class for, say, Maths but in a class for children needed more support in English. It must also be noted that in many other subjects, students are already mixed according to their options.

Of course, mixed ability settings have their own challenges. Many equate them with group work, which can easily degenerate into two learners doing all the meaningful work, one doing the drawings on the chart and a fourth keeping the rest of the group entertained. There are other successful tried-and-tested strategies that can be used to guarantee learning for all.

Two examples already used in Malta are multi-sensory approaches to attain literacy and numeracy, and writing workshop methodology to develop learning skills through writing. A third example is co-ordinated teaching/learning, in which each learner has a particular task to undertake without which the whole learning project cannot be completed successfully.

These strategies respect the different learning styles that pupils bring with them in the classroom, and are the great advantage that mixed ability learning has over whole-class approaches.

The 11+ reform proposal, which was partly the result of an intensive consultation process that included interviews with hundreds of learners, parents and teachers, and a questionnaire sent to all teachers in Malta is currently the subject of a massive consultation exercise with parents, teachers and the general public. Ten public meetings in various state schools are currently being held and a final meeting will be held on January 10 from 9.30 to 11 a.m. at Robert Samut hall, Floriana. The general public can also send its feedback via e-mail, on skola@gov.mt or freephone 1571 up to January 15.

Once the consultations are over, the final decisions will need to be taken. These are not foregone conclusions - the consultation process is not a sham. Some very valid suggestions and amendments to the proposals have been made. And any decision will need to be backed up by solid financial backing, thorough planning and ongoing support to parents and schools.

Mr Spiteri is principal, St Margaret's College.