Returning to a system which failed miserably is “illogical” - Prof Wain

Professor of Education Studies at the University of Malta Kenneth Wain has said that there is enough proof to show that mixed ability teaching works well in schools when done in the proper way.

“It is productive, exciting when it works and it produces excellent results both socially and academically.

“But for it to work it needs committed and hard-working teachers while requiring more work than the other alternative state schools offered up to two or three years ago,” he said, referring to streaming, which was stopped back in 2011.

Prof. Wain’s comments come at a time when the government has decided to introduce banding in schools, dubbed by critics as a different form of streaming. The introduction of the banding concept will not affect Church or independent schools where mixed-ability teaching is normal, since it only applies to State schools.

Describing it is as illogical to return to a system that “failed miserably”, Prof. Wain said that banding is based on the same principle as streaming and is a step in that direction.

He continues: “It took us many years to understand that streaming is a bad option; it failed the students, their parents and the country, and produced disastrous results that are well-documented in various European and international statistics, particularly of disaffected early school drop-outs.”

He explained that in the years up to Year 4, children will be selected by age, which is different from streaming, where selection is by academic ability. “Streaming for this age group was abandoned many years ago,” said Prof. Wane, questioning whether – if ability is related to age – the move is intended to surreptitiously introduce streaming for this age group.

“I am still waiting to hear the logic of this move, but what is sure is that the obvious social and other benefits of mixing children who are of broadly similar age at this level, in other words peer learning, will be impoverished.

“For Years 5 and 6, we are told, the selection will be more fluid than straightforward academic ability, and that it will be an engineered and more socially sensitive selection.

“Raw assessment scores in English, Maltese and Maths will be sent to the central authorities, but we have been left in the dark as to how the selection will be made, what formula will be used and who exactly is going to do this banding.”

He reiterated that the principle is bad, it is a backwards step and that decisions about the learning programmes of pupils should be taken at school level and in consultation with parents, where the children are known, not selected by anonymous officials at the ministry, even if it was a good practice in principle, which it is not.

Prof. Wain said that nobody can predict the effect this “banding” experiment will have but what is sure is that it is totally contrary to the principles of the National Curriculum.

The pertinent question to which the Ministry must reply, according to the professor, is what kind of commitment, if any, it owes to the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) document that was produced after many years of hard work and input by various partners, and whether this document has just become merely a piece of paper.

“The NCF clearly places the individual child at the centre of the curriculum which implies a method of teaching that begins with the recognition of the individuality of each child – in other words, the recognition of difference, that children grow at different rates, develop differently, have different aptitudes and different needs.

“Mixed ability teaching implies adapting different learning strategies to the needs of the learners rather than teaching a class, thereby respecting their individuality – this is what mixed-ability learning means, and this is why it requires hard work, classes of a smaller scale, more joint planning by the teachers themselves and the production of various resources, among other issues.

“Banding is the opposite; it is about putting individuals in questionable categories, a retrograde step that encourages traditional class-based teaching, and is not the way into the future - on the contrary it takes us down the wrong road.

“It isn’t as if pupil numbers in state primary classrooms are high,” he said, quoting a UNESCO report published a few years ago that showed Malta’s state schools had an average of 13 in a class, a luxury no other country in the EU enjoys, while not forgetting to mention the generous numbers of learning assistants and the huge investment made.

Prof. Wain said that the question the Ministry should be asking is why, with this investment and input, teachers in state schools claim that it has failed, and the answer would be because they have not taken mixed-ability teaching on board seriously and professionally and not because mixed ability classes do not work.

Banding a middle-of-the-road grouping system – Prof. Mark Borg

Mark G. Borg, a Professor of Educational Psychology in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta, who, along with a colleague, carried out research into the effects of streaming, has said that the banding concept is “a middle-of-the-road system of grouping pupils whereby these are placed in rank order according to their performance”.

Speaking to this newspaper, Prof. Borg, who was asked to elaborate on the difference between mixed ability, banding, streaming and setting concepts, said that streaming, banding, setting and mixed ability, within class ability grouping and cross-grade grouping, are different types of grouping pupils on the basis of, say, scholastic achievement.

“In streaming, as used to be practised in this country, pupils were placed in rank order according to their performance and the first 25 or so pupils go to class 1, the next 25 to class 2, the next 25 to class 3 and the remaining 25 to class 4.

“This is ‘fine streaming’ because a pupil may end up in one class and not another on the basis of 1 mark out of 500, for instance. Each class consists of pupils who are homogenous in ability; which leads to a very restricted ability mix,” he explained.

“In mixed ability, there is no attempt to group together pupils of the same ability such that pupils are assigned to classes at random. Each class would consist of pupils heterogeneous in ability so that in any class one would expect to find pupils across the ability range.”

As for banding, which is being introduced in schools as from September, Prof. Borg explained that the group is divided into two bands, for instance, grouping 50 students in each.

“Class 1 is made up of every other pupil from band 1, with class 2 taking in the remaining 25 in band 1 and the process repeated in the remaining bands.

“Each class would now consist of pupils whose ability mix is more restricted than is found in a mixed ability class but which is wider than is found in a streamed class.

“One can actually describe banding as ‘mixed ability grouping within a band’. It is imperative, however, that the mistakes of the past are not repeated and it must be ensured that the best teachers and resources must be allocated throughout the bands.

“Clearly, all the necessary support must be given to all the pupils who need it,” he insisted.

Asked if he feels that mixed ability classes can be a drawback for bright students, he said that rather than hearing what he feels, it would be better to hear what teachers who teach mixed ability classes have to say.

“Although different teachers may have different experiences, the view of the overwhelming number of teachers that I have met in the course of my research studies would tell you that mixed ability as introduced in our schools is failing students at both ends of the ability spectrum. They would tell you that, rather than the more able ones ‘helping’ the less able (as the literature would suggest) their experiences show that none of the groups gain anything.”

To better understand the banding concept, Prof. Borg said that one has to go back to see how mixed ability was introduced some years back.

“First of all, it was then decided to go from streaming to mixed ability in one go, when good sense dictates that it would have been better had we first gone from streaming to banding and, at a subsequent stage, from banding to mixed ability.

“You do not normally go from one extreme to another in the same breath.

“Secondly, teachers were not properly prepared to teach mixed ability classes, so that many of them were left in the deep end, trying to cope with a reality for which they did not have the skills to cope with.

“Thirdly, the resources and support that one normally finds in mixed ability settings never really materialised,” he said.

Asked whether banding could lead to the ‘labelling’ of students, he replied: “Anything, even mixed ability, can lead to labelling.

“If we want to delude ourselves into thinking that pupils do not know who the bright or the less-bright pupils are, then so be it. Pupils know well who is what. What we need to ensure is that no form of labelling is tolerated.”

On whether the concepts of banding or streaming move away from inclusive education, Prof. Borg said that inclusive education is not an matter of ‘either/or’.

“There are various degrees of inclusive education. Let us not forget that the ‘inclusive education’ to which you may be referring distinguishes between children who go to state, Church and independent schools.

“I hardly need to point out that some of these schools are anything but elitist in more ways than one.

“So, in fact, you can have selection at different levels, but in any case, ‘selection’ is not a dirty word,” he said.