Malta Will Soon Start Scrapping Mid-Year Exams In Radical Education Shake-Up
Midyear exams will soon start getting phased out of Maltese state schools as part of a radical shake-up in the education system.
While most students will be sitting for their midyear exams in a few months’ time, this will not be the case for students from Year 4 till Form 2 (Year 8), who will instead be assessed on the work they would have carried out in the preceding months.
It will be extended to include Form 3 students in the 2019/20 scholastic year and Form 4 students in the following year. Annual exams will remain in place.
The changes were announced a few months ago and included in the government’s Budget for 2019, and form part of Education Minister Evarist Bartolo’s strategy to shift the education system away from its examination culture.
“The system is very contradictory. On one hand, we’re telling students that schools are not just factories for passing exams. But at the same time, the message being sent out is that you are rewarded on the strength of your exam results,” he said in an interview with MaltaTodaya few years ago. “That is also why I am working on changing the system in a way that non-formal education is accredited in the same way as formal education. We need to add a value to those skills, too. We want to move away from a one-size fits all education system. People are different; they learn things differently.”
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