Maltese education system

Abstract

Education in Malta has always been on everybody’s agenda as a result of the importance to provide a holistic approach to education. Scholars have argued, time and time again, for reforms to take place at one stage or another and for standards to be achieved while putting the learner at the centre. This would ensure that the country is equipped with the required manpower and the expertise needed in the different fields. The call has always been for an educational system which seeks to nurture schools into learning communities where the emphasis is not only on teaching and learning for exams but for the optimum development of the individual. In line with a holistic view of education, such a system would equip students with the necessary skills to be able to move on from one field of study to another if desired. Following the 1999 National Minimum Curriculum and the myriad of interpretations to it by those in the field – teachers in particular – a new educational system which provides for every learner to succeed began to take root in the minds of policy makers. An educational system which embraces flexibility, focuses in real terms on child-centred approaches and above all empowers educators to have all the necessary skills and knowledge to provide each individual – using the right pedagogies- with the kind of education which helps in the real development of the students’ potential. Discussions and ideas continued to flow and the bold and important decision to network state primary and secondary schools into Colleges came to fruition in 2008.As Bentley rightly put it: “Transformation will only occur by shaping and stimulating disciplined processes of innovation within the school system, and building an infrastructure capable of transferring ideas, knowledge and new practices laterally across it… The organisational form which can give depth and scale to this process of transformation is the network”.