Evaluating our secondary education

When the SEC results came out a few days government issued a statement which described them as being encouraging.

"Some 90% passed in Maltese and English language, 93% got through in Maths, 94% in computer studies and 90% in Physics." With such brilliant results, our education system would be considered the envy of the world - much like Finland's, which is considered 'excellent' and at the very top in global surveys and evaluations. Our system is considered "fair" and there is still a lot of hard work to be done to improve it and be classified as "good" and then must work harder to become "very good" and eventually "excellent".

But according to government propaganda, we are already at the very top, so we do not need to improve our education system. Year after year, government has reduced the publication of the SEC results to a banal propaganda exercise. Government inflates the statistics of success by taking in consideration only those who sit for the exam and all those who pass grade 1 - 7, ignoring those who do not sit for exams and those who fail or get very low marks and are graded 6 and 7.

When the MATSEC Board publishes its sober and serious analysis on the results in January, it is hardly mentioned in the media, especially by those manufacturing consent and support for the PN government.

Last January, the MATSEC Board published its report and concluded that only 44.5% of the 4,613 infants born in 1995 obtained the passes in the required subjects and were therefore eligible for entry into Form VI. The report also said: "Special attention is given to statistics regarding the... boys and girls who were born in 1995 and who sat for SEC examinations in 2011. These data serve as an indicator of the attainment of students at the end of compulsory schooling, which together with the results of the TIMSS 2007 and PISA 2009 surveys, provide an external source of evaluation of secondary education in Malta."

The report drew attention to the still very wide gap in achievement between boys and girls in the 1995 cohort: "since 50.9% of females obtained the required qualifications in six subjects for admission to the sixth form as against 38.6% of the boys. Similarly, 16.4% of 16-year-old girls registered for the three sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) but only 9.7% of the boys did so".

So when government blew its trumpets a few days ago about the brilliant results obtained by our students in SEC with passes in the main subjects ranging from 90% to 94%, I got in touch, informally, with a very reliable person on the MATSEC Board and asked him to comment on the results. This is what he told me: "By and large the trends are the same. In some SEC subjects the results are slightly better; in others they are slightly worse. In fact, the differences are /- 1%, except in Maltese where there are 2.5% more passes with Grades 1 - 5 or 3.5% more passes with grades 1 - 7." This means that 59% of our 16 year old passed in Maltese grade 1 - 5 and around 70% passed in grade 1 - 7.

Government includes those who get grades 6 and 7 to inflate the figures and to show a better pass rate. What marks do these students when they are given grade 6 and 7? Should we be satisfied and lower our expectations, instead of raising standards and challenging our students to do so as well?

Should we be happy with these results where 41% of our 16 year olds do not obtain a grade 1 - 5 in Maltese after at least 11 years of schooling? 60% of our 16 year olds pass in English grade 1 - 5. 53% pass grade 1 - 5 in Mathematics, 51% in Physics and 21% in Computer Studies. Should we jump up and down and celebrate these results and forget that 56% of our 16 year olds do not pass grade 1 - 5 in the main subjects they will need to get on in education?

Should we forget the 468 16-year olds who did not even register for any SEC exam? Should we ignore over 200 students who register and then do not turn up for the exams because they have given up? What about our young men and women with learning difficulties and disabilities? In 1995 we had over 460 students with dyslexia who could have sat for the SEC exams. Only a quarter of them, about 121 of them registered for a SEC exam in the main subjects. How many of them passed grade 1 - 5? Only 39 out of 460 in English, 12 in Computer Studies, 23 in Maltese and 31 in Physics.

If we really want to improve our education system and increase the opportunities in life for many more young people, we need to a frank and honest evaluation of the system. By all means, let us celebrate the winners and what we are getting right, but we cannot - for the sake of idiotic partisan propaganda - turn our backs on those who can do better, and especially those who are the losers of the system. Many of our young people are going to waste, and this cannot be right and must be addressed.