Poor command of English and Maltese, especially in essay writing, has once again marred the performance of 16-year-olds sitting the history Sec exam last May.
On a positive note, however, the share of candidates obtaining a pass mark was the highest in the last six years, a modest 60% of the total.
Examiners encountered the occasional history gaffe, such as the inability to distinguish between a grandmaster and a prime minister. Details on the overall performance of the 189 students who sat for the exam were published by the Matsec board.
The popularity of history as an academic subject is in decline, with this year’s number of candidates significantly below the six-year average. However, three out of every five obtained a grade between 1 (highest) and 5, which is enough to enter post-secondary institutions. The rate represents a 5% improvement over the last six years.
Candidates mostly opted to respond in English, with only two answering in Maltese, the lowest in recent years.
Limited vocabulary, inadequate writing skills
In their report, history examiners echoed concerns about “the lowering of linguistic skills among candidates”, which they had raised in reports on other subjects.
Limited vocabulary, inadequate writing skills and an inability to understand questions properly were all cited. Moreover, idiomatic expressions seemed to be a problem for a good number of students who struggled to formulate understandable sentences or write paragraphs with a logical sequence of ideas.
Concerns about declining levels in both English and Maltese writing skills have been repeatedly flagged in recent years.
When it came to the actual subject matter, history examiners noted that some candidates were not able to distinguish between the reformist and anti-reformist parties, which were the predecessors of the Labour and Nationalist parties, respectively.
Moreover, on the language question – an interwar-period controversy on whether the language of instruction should be English or Italian – some candidates mistakenly said that the debate came to an end with the start of World War I and not when Fascist Italy bombed Malta in 1940.
Another historical event on which candidates were not prepared enough was the politico-religious quarrel of the 1930s. Apart from the fact that nobody was able to name Malta’s archbishop of the time, Mgr Mauro Caruana, some confused this quarrel with the one that occurred 30 years later, at the turn of the 1960s.
The biggest bloopers arguably cropped up in a particular question which focused on the social, economic and political effects of World War I. While noting the wide array of incorrect responses given when asked who was governor of Malta between 1915 and 1919, examiners were dismayed to see that some students were unable to distinguish between grandmasters and prime ministers.
A good number of students were unable to identify Malta’s prime minister in 1964, with some attributing Malta’s independence to Dom Mintoff and others to Sir Gerald Strickland.
In line with the Sec regulations, the students must sit for a common paper and opt for either Paper IIA and the less demanding Paper IIB. In this respect it was pointed out that the level of those sitting for the latter was very low across the board.