@ Riya
Qedd tara kemm kelli ragun snin ilu jien hux? Dan opportunist bil pedigree.

Among the distinguishing features in the Finnish education system, the BBC mentioned the following:
– classrooms with students of mixed abilities;
– primary and secondary education are combined – no disruption from transition;
– students are kept in the same class for several years – the teachers get to know a history of their students;
– main school is started at age seven – in earlier years the children learn from playing;

I found the couple of articles on the subject very interesting, and they should be of interest to anyone in education policy making.

@vomiting
Mhux ahjar tmur “tivvomitja” fuq is-site tat-TYOM. Forsi jtuk xi medicina ghall-istonku?

Jew forsi jisilfu xi wahda Inspector Gadget. Dak jidher li ghandu varjeta mhux hazin.

That’s not always the case Daphne. My first choice for my son was St Benild’s and Stella Maris College which is where my brother and husband went. We weren’t lucky enough to win a place there so our next choice was San Anton for all the reasons you mentioned.

What other choice did we have? There was no way that I was going to send him to a government school.

Since I teach in one I suppose I should have shown more faith in the state school system. The fact is that in my experience if you happen to have a daughter who is bright then she will do very well in the state system because she’ll pass the junior lyceum exam and the girls’ junior lyceums are excellent (or will have been, but that’s another story).

Other than that, late developers in the primary will be relegated to lower and lower streams, will stand no chance in the junior lyceum exams and will fetch up in area secondaries which, in the case of those for boys, make Dante’s circles of Hell look like a vacation in the Caribbean.

We simply couldn’t risk this happening to our son.

The way things have panned out now he’s perfectly happy at San Anton and the education he is receiving is worth every penny of the fees.

You want to bet that he will register them again next year?

This is only a stop-gap solution and a guarantee that they are at least attending a private or church school. From my experince with San Anton (San Andrea had still to open) it is quite tough to find a place – I remember that I had gone in to register my son, at six months (after being prodded by everyone) – the result, he was and remained on the waiting list.

If I remember well we had registered him at three independent schools and were only successful with St Michael Foundation – and this only because they were enlarging the school.