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James Debono
As government proposes financial incentives to university students opting for science subjects, the Education Division has entered its seventh month without education officers in Science.
According to the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta, Dr Carmel Borg, this effectively means science in primary and secondary schools lacks leadership.
“It is absolutely unacceptable given the centrality of science in today’s world and in the context of the highly ambitious Lisbon Agenda.”
Malta currently is at the lowest in the EU with just 2.7 science and technology graduates per 1,000 people aged between 20 to 29. The EU average is 10.9 graduates.
The post of education officer in science has been vacant since April 2005 when two sciences officers retired and another one was promoted.
Sources said the financial reward for this post is believed not to be enough of an incentive to encourage teachers to apply for the post.
In fact nobody has applied for the vacancy, which carries an annual wage of Lm8,575 – the equivalent of the wage of a Head of School. Unlike other teachers, education officers are expected to work full office hours instead of school hours.
According to the Education Division, in the absence of Science EOs, the officer responsible for mathematics is assuming greater responsibility for science, while at the secondary level the ADE Curriculum Development is carrying out co-ordination in this field.
The division insists the absence of the Science EO has led to subject coordinators assuming greater responsibilities within their job description.
“Despite the great dedication and enthusiasm of subject coordinators, their work is limited by the fact that they still have classes to teach,” Dr Paul Pace contends, who lectures and conducts research in environmental education and science education in the Faculty of Education.
The problems in the primary and secondary sector are being reflected at tertiary level. The number of prospective chemistry teachers has been decreasing at the very time when Malta is successfully attracting investment in the pharmaceutical sector. During the present academic year, only one entrant for the Bachelor of Education degree is specialising in the teaching of chemistry.
There is not even a single second-year student opting for this area of study. On the other hand there are nine students in the third and fourth year studying to become chemistry teachers.
According to Pace, the decline in prospective chemistry teachers reflects the unpopularity of this area of study at secondary level. Pace notes that over the past years the number of students opting for another science area apart from the compulsory physics has increased. But most students have opted for biology, physical education and home economics rather than chemistry, at a time when Malta is seeking to attract investment in the pharmaceutical sector.
But both Pace and Carmel Borg contend that the best way to attract students to science subjects is by doing away with rigid divisions between physics, chemistry and biology at secondary level.
“At the moment, students have to choose between a limited and disjointed diet of science and a highly compartmentalised and specialised programme,” Pace says.
The six-year-old National Minimum Curriculum which has been endorsed by all stakeholders proposes the introduction of a new area of study called ‘integrated science’. Pace explains that the aim of this proposal was that of achieving universal scientific literacy, encouraging specialisation at a later stage: “in order to attract more students to science, the way science is thought is more important than the content itself.”
This multi-disciplinary approach is being taken in other countries like the United States of America. But six years later, the idea has been shelved.
Carmel Borg expressed his disappointment that the national minimum curriculum vision of coordinated science for all has not been realised. He also regrets that the Faculty’s switch to accommodate the curriculum’s vision was not matched by the education authorities’ provision.
Although all Maltese state schools are equipped with laboratories, the Faculty of Education dean is concerned a number of students are not accessing science and others rarely enter a laboratory. Pace and John Bencini, the president of the Malta Union of Teachers, confirm that labs in area secondary schools are sometimes less equipped than those in junior lyceums.
“There are still many labs in area secondary schools which are still below standards. There is still a lot to be done,” Bencini told MaltaToday.
Another difference between area secondary schools and junior lyceums is that while students at the former can only choose an extra science subject after form 4, junior lyceum students can choose two extra science subjects after form 3.
The situation is even worse for students at the lower end of the education pyramid. Students in the so-called “ex-opportunity centres” are not even thought any science at all.
jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt
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