[WATCH] Teachers more ‘cautious’ than students, parents on co-education

Teachers more ‘cautious’ than students, parents on co-education

A questionnaire survey carried out five months into the 2014/2015 scholastic year has found teachers to be more “cautious” about co-education in state secondary schools than students and parents.

The results are based on the responses of 1,938 students (80% of the student population), 400 teachers (56% of the teacher population) and 884 parents (46% of parent population).

The report by Mark Borg and Maria Ciappara found that eight in 10 students were happy and content at school, with 84% indicating that they were doing well at school.

One in four teachers felt that students were generally doing well in a co-education school; while almost half indicated that co-education “made no difference”, around 21% of the teachers felt that the students were generally “underachieving in a co-education setting”.

78% of the teachers also reported that they had settled down in the new setting while 12% called for additional support to maintain discipline in the classroom.

On their end, the parents’ and guardians’ views reflected the views of the children. Only 1.5% declared dissatisfaction with the school and the co-education system, with 92% feeling that the child had settled down. 85% said their child was doing well at school.

The report warned that several challenges remained, the major one being the transition from middle to senior school. “Only by thorough preparation across all of these schools, and by remaining constantly vigilant, can the co-education experience be a truly positive one for all students,” Borg and Ciappara said.

Publishing the report, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said that the co-education setting had proved to be more of a challenge to teachers in secondary area who were used to teaching single-sex classes.

“With teachers gaining more experience, such issues will no longer prevail. But, realistically speaking, issues such as discipline and respect are raised everywhere, irrespective of the school setting,” he said.

Bartolo said that the goal behind the survey was to study the participants’ views, and not to compare co-education and single-sex schools.  According to the minister, it was too early to compare academic results.