Special Topic Course 1

 Multi-grade teaching: Concept and status

Multi-grade teaching refers to the teaching of students of different ages, grades and abilities in the same group. It is referred to variously in the literature as 'multilevel', 'multiple class', 'composite class', 'vertical group', 'family class', and, in the case of one-teacher schools, 'unitary schools'. It is to be distinguished from 'mono-grade' teaching in which students within the same grade are assumed to be more similar in terms of age and ability. Substantial variation in ability within a mono-grade class often leads to "mixed-ability" teaching. Multi-grade teaching should also be distinguished from "multi-age-within-grade" teaching which occurs when there are wide variations in age within the same grade. This is common in developing countries, where the age of entry to school varies and where grade repetition is common. However, in North America, where age and grade are more congruent, the terms "multi-age" and "multi-grade" are often used synonymously.

Several writers have pointed out that the first state-supported elementary schools in North America and Europe were un-graded. The school often consisted of a single room in which one teacher taught basic literacy and numeracy to children from six to fifteen years of age. In the US the "death knell of the one room school was sounded" after a visit to Prussia by Horace Mann, the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, in 1843.

the first element of superiority in a Prussian school...consists in the proper classification of scholars. In all places where the numbers are sufficiently large to allow it, the children are divided according to ages and attainments, and a single teacher has the charge of only a single class... There is no obstacle whatever... to the introduction at once of this mode of dividing and classifying scholars in all our large towns (Mann quoted in Pratt 1986)

Urban education administrators in the US were soon to recommend that schools be divided on the lines of age and grade, a development which was consistent with the division of labour in industry. The "principle of the division of labour holds good in schools, as in mechanical industry" (Bruck quoted in Pratt 1986). The mono-grade model was to become a universal ideal in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and came to dominate the basis of school, class and curriculum organisation used by central authorities.

http://collections.infocollections.org/ukedu/en/d/Jdep12e/3.html

The persistence of the multi-grade reality towards the close of the twentieth century

Yet despite the ideal, the multi-grade reality has characterised hundreds of thousands of schools throughout the twentieth century and will continue to do so well into the twenty first. Although information about the extent of multi-grade teaching tends not to be collected on a regular basis, 1959 data were collected by UNESCO's International Bureau of Education (Table 1). Table 1 indicates the large number and proportion of teachers who were teaching in one-teacher schools in the late 1950s - some 2040% in countries of South and Central America, 16% in India, 25% in Turkey and 15% in the USSR. The percentage of teachers teaching in one-teacher schools in some of the European countries was also extremely high - 47% in Spain, 23% in Luxembourg, 20% in France, 10% in Switzerland. Figures in the US and UK were lower - 2.9% in the USA, 3.6% in Scotland, 2.3% in Northern Ireland and 0.7% in England and Wales (UNESCO/IBE 1961).

Comparable data for the late 1980s early 1990s are not available. Data on multi-grade teachers and schools do not appear to be collected systematically by national and international agencies. Table 2 synthesises available information from a wide variety of sources on the current status of multi-grade teaching. It expresses the incidence of multi-grade teaching at the primary school level in different countries in the years for which the most recent data are available. The several columns in Table 2 reflect the non-standard nature of available data. In some countries data on the number and percentage of one and two teacher schools are available. In others only the number and or the percentage of schools which have multi-grade classes are available; or the number of classes within a system which are multi-grade; or the number of teachers per school; or the percentage of teachers who teach multi-grade; or the percentage of students who study in multi-grade classes.

Table 2 suggests that in 1986 India had over 300,000 one or two teacher schools, representing more than 60% of all schools. In Sri Lanka the percentage is lower. However the seven hundred schools in Sri Lanka which have either one or two teachers are located in the most difficult environments in a country which has achieved near universal enrolment in primary school. In Malaysia too the multi-grade schools are located in those areas which are disadvantaged in several ways Malay and Chinese schools in small villages and settlements and in the remote, secluded areas of Sabah; Tamil schools in rubber estates and the aboriginal schools in the interior and remote areas of Peninsular Malaysia.

A multi grade class is defined as a class composed of two or more grades less than one teacher in a complete or incomplete elementary school. But when was this system introduced in the Philippines setting?    
The Multi Grade System has been implemented since 1920’s. it has always been covered by policies on monograde class organization which resulted in multi grade classes. The multi grade system has been with us for quite some time but it is very obvious that we have not regarded it as a very viable alternative delivery system to provide access to basic education as well as quality education by providing complete grade levels in all public elementary schools. 
While DECS (now DepEd) officials then had always recognized the existence of multi grade classes, it was only under the leadership of Secretary Armand Fabella (1993-1994) that the multi grade program was launched as a systematic and viable means of meeting the goal and providing education for all. 
The existence of the multi grade classes in our country is also embodied under the provision of the Philippine Constitution. Considering the present thrusts of the government to make at least elementary education truly accessible to all particularly to children in remote barangays, a policy has been made and declared to build a school in all school-less barangays where enrolment and population growth trends warrant the establishment of a new school, and develop and /or implement the Multi grade System of Delivery, so as to enable children to complete their elementary schooling particularly in areas where it is uneconomical to put up a six-classroom building. 
From then on, multi grade classes became truly a part of our educational system. at present, some of these multi grade classes were already converted to monograde classes due to increase of enrolment while other areas of the country are just starting to put up multi grade classes