A recent study commissioned by the Canadian Education Association (Gajadharsingh, 1991) reported that across the nation "one out of seven classrooms is a multi-grade and approximately one out of every five students is enrolled in a multi-grade classroom" (p. 1).  These figures are described as a conservative estimate with every indication that there will be an ever increasing number of multiage classrooms.

 Multi-grade classrooms exist in more than "thirty percent of the schools in Newfoundland and Labrador.  In the 160 smallest schools (student population less than 100) 70 percent of the teachers work with more than one grade in the same classroom" (Riggs, 1987, p. 22).  At the primary and elementary level this figure is closer to 100% for multi-grade situations in small schools.

 The projected continuing declining enrolment for this province's education system guarantees that the number of small schools and multigrade classrooms will be increasing in this province as in other parts of the country (Riggs, 1987; Doody, 1990).  This is especially true at the primary and elementary levels where for many valid social and psychological reasons parents and educators do not see further consolidation and increased busing of very young children as an educational or humane solution to the schooling needs of rural areas.

 The number of grades that are combined in multi-age classrooms in the province varies considerably.  In fifty percent of multi-grade classrooms two grades are combined; fifteen percent have three grades together; and approximately ten percent have more than three grades (Riggs, 1987).

 The extreme form of multigrade/multi-age teaching was the once very familiar all-grade/all ages one room school historically associated with the outports of Newfoundland.  Veteran teachers recall having to work with up to 63 children in grades from kindergarten ("primer") to grade eleven.  This kind of pedagogical situation (nightmare?) has faded to the realm of folklore and legend, although until recently the majority of multi-grade classrooms were still to be found in remote and isolated settings.

 However, there are several indicators that shifting enrolment patterns will see multi-grading increasingly a necessary curricular option for larger schools and urban boards (Sher, 1985; Gajadharsingh, 1 991).  Linda Doody of the Bonavista-Trinity-Placentia Integrated School Board suggests that "it is conceivable that multi-grading will become the issue of the 1990's" (Doody, 1990).  She asks the essential question: "Are we prepared?"

 Multi-age and multi-graded primary/elementary classrooms present some very difficult and demanding curricular challenges for educators.  Teachers who have to cope with just one grade complain that the provincially mandated "prescribed program of studies" which consists of up to twelve discrete subjects has created an overcrowded curriculum (Riggs, 1987; Doody, 1990).  If a teacher who has responsibility for only one grade finds covering the prescribed curriculum difficult, imagine the daunting curricular challenge faced by the teachers in multi-grade classrooms.  Theoretically, they have a curricular responsibility for as many as twenty-four, thirty-six or even forty-eight different subjects in a single temporal frame.  The students may vary in age by as much as four or five years.

 Riggs (1986a) asked educators who work in multi-grade contexts to identify their greatest problem in trying to provide a quality educational program for the children in these schools.  It is not surprising that at the top of the list for both teachers and principals was the curricular problem of too many grades, too many courses (subjects), and not enough time to deal with individual students needing special help (p. 8, 9).

 Teachers expressed the following kinds of curricular concerns in relation to working in a multi-grade classroom:

 (Multi-grading)... prevents adequate time to be spent with the slower children.  As a result these children tend to lag behind.

 There just isn't enough time for the number of courses to be taught.

 There is just not enough time for a teacher to get everything done that is supposed to be done since instruction time has to be shared among several grades (Riggs, 1986a).

 Other researchers locally and nationally report the same kind of curricular concerns:

 One problem that we run into is what to do with so many subjects.  We have three grades in each classroom, and six subjects.  Well, that's eighteen subjects.  How are we going to spend time on all of these in one week?

 My biggest problem is that I have Grades K, One, Two and Three in a one-room school and I find it very difficult to keep them all occupied in valuable activities at the same time.

 My main obstacle or problem is the number of grades I have to teach (Baksh and Singh, 1980).

 Teachers of split-grade classes are forced by necessity to interpret curricular mandates very loosely or to not even attempt what has been dictated by law for students at particular grade levels to achieve (Craig and McLennan,1987).

 Teachers remain concerned about the curriculum - how to cover the content and accomplish the objectives of two or more different, sometimes unrelated sets of materials (Doody, 1990).

 The delineation and defining of the program of studies to be followed in the schools of Newfoundland and Labrador is a provincial responsibility.  "it (school programs) is not a local matter" (Riggs, 1987, p. 22).  Individual Boards and teachers are not free, legally, to decide on their own what to teach and what to exclude.  The intention is that 'all schools should teach basically the same curriculum" (Riggs, 1987).

 Teachers and boards are caught between the traditional "rock and hard place": they are expected to deliver the same curriculum in a multi-grade classroom as other teachers do in a single-grade classroom; yet they know that this is simply impossible.  'It is very difficult", point out teachers, "for small schools to follow the exact same curriculum that bigger schools have" (Riggs, 1986a, p. 20).  The provincially prescribed curriculum was designed specifically for large urban schools; the guiding image was one teacher in one class with one grade at a time.  There appears to have been little or no consideration or thought given to how teachers in small schools and multi-grade classrooms are to manage.

 When teachers and school boards look to the Province for advice and guidance as to how to resolve this dilemma and cope with this apparently impossible situation, they encounter a policy vacuum.  The Department is silent on this matter:

 Effective schools research suggests the necessity of a common mission, of clearly articulated goals with expectations being communicated to learners.  In the case of multigrade classrooms -no policies or guidelines exist - there is no common mission (Doody, 1990, p. 30; emphasis added).

 Sometimes, too, the board puts a lot of pressure on teachers in multigrade classrooms.  They expect the same thing from you as from a single-grade classroom.  The supervisor comes to the school and expects you to be doing the same thing as the teacher in the single-grade classroom.  They keep at you and you begin to ask what you look like in their eyes for not teaching everything they want you to teach.  And they evaluate your ability as if you were teaching in a single-grade classroom; you had to do as good a job in a multi-grade classroom as if you were handling one grade (Baksh and Singh, 1980, p. 101).

 The young children who cannot keep up simply fall behind and are left by the way-side.  It is hardly surprising that the drop-out rate in these rural contexts where multi-graded schooling predominates is significantly higher than elsewhere (Spain and Sharp, 1990).  It is also noteworthy that when students were asked to indicate their reasons for dropping out of school, 'school program related reasons were given by 41.1% of the sample' (Spain and Sharp, 1990, p. 39).

 The educational orientation becomes narrowly academic and the context is cruelly reduced to the survival of the academic fittest.  Even the children who do remain in school receive an inferior education especially in the areas of aesthetics and science.

 This situation is ethically unacceptable and is in fact illegal.  Students who live and go to school in rural Newfoundland and who may be "geographically handicapped" deserve educational opportunities equal to those of their more urban counterparts:

 'People who live in small and isolated Newfoundland communities are major contributors to the economy of the province and it is reasonable to expect that there should be equity in the services which are provided to these communities including education' (Riggs, 1987, p. 46).

 Regrettably, these transformative curricular experiments by practitioners in the field are often reportedly thwarted and negated by the oppressive attitudes and hardened mindsets of some Board officials and some Department bureaucrats who seem, again, insensitive to the problem, unable to appreciate the need for change, and incapable of modifying their existing curricular orientations.  Riggs (1 986b) captures the expressed frustrations of innovative teachers and Board personnel who attempt curriculum change on their own:

 (The program which was developed) ... was so well received that practically all our schools embraced it.... Although it covered all topics suggested in the Program of Studies for the primary grades... it does not conform with the prevalent attitudes of the Department of Education whose consultants are most reluctant to depart from the separate subject component (p. 7).

 The real curricular problem in the final analysis may be best perceived as being an ideological one.  Small schools and multigrade classrooms are held captive by an educational belief system that supports the notion that a single, tightly prescribed, centrally controlled, content-oriented, subject-centred, lock-step graded approach to schooling can serve the needs of all the diverse pedagogical and social contexts of this province.  Educators who work in the field know that such an approach is simply unworkable.  Not only does it contribute to many of the current inequities but it also creates barriers to curricular approaches that would improve the quality of education for the children and the professional task for the teachers in small schools and mufti-grade classrooms.

 The solution to this problem lies in the development of a curricular approach designed specifically to be responsive and sensitive to the needs of mufti-age contexts.  Critical and reflective practitioners from the field have long advocated the need for such a curricular development.  Most of the submissions received by Riggs (1986a) made this very point most emphatically.  In his final report Riggs (1987) identified this proposed curricular solution as the 'key recommendation in an attempt to make the approved primary and elementary curriculum more manageable for teachers without a loss of concepts and skills to students" (p. 24).

 Finally, educationists and researchers on the national and international scene advocate the development of a 'distinctive approach' for solving the special needs of multigrade teaching contexts.  The Canadian Education Association strongly recommends that provincial departments and ministries of education, school districts, school trustee associations, teacher federations make the special needs of multi-age learning and teaching a focus of research and development for the next three years: "This means giving priority to a pedagogical approach, the structure and organization of classrooms, to the creation of different curricula and support material and the possibility of reduced workload for teachers in multi-grade classrooms" (CEA Report, 1991, p. 1-2).

 There seems to be a clear consensus calling for the development of a distinctive curricular approach to learning and teaching firmly grounded in the practical reality of the special pedagogical milieu of multi-age contexts.

 Baksh, I.J. and Singh, A.  Teachers' Perception of Teaching:  A Newfoundland Study.  St. John's:  Faculty of Education, Memorial University, 1980.

 Burston, R.  "Family Grouping:  A Structural Innovation in Elementary Schools". Interchange, 8 (1977-78) pp. 143-150.

 Craig, C. and McLellan, J.  "Using Multi-Grade Classrooms More Rationally".  The Canadian School Executive.  (February, 1988), pp. 20-22.

 Doody, Linda.  Multi-Grading in the 1990's:  Tradition, Transition and  Transformation.  (Unpublished) 1990.

 Ford, B.  "Multi-Age Grouping in the Elementary School and Children's Affective Development:  A Review of Recent Research".  Elementary School  Journal.  (November 1977), pp. 149-159.

 Gajadharsingh, Joel.  The Multi-Grade Classroom:  Myth and Reality.  Toronto: Canadian Education Association, 1991.

 Gayfer, Margaret (ed.).  The Multi-Grade Classroom: Myth and Reality.  Toronto:  Canadian Education Association, 1991.

 Marshall, D.G. "The Small School in the 80's: Looking For An Answer To Questions of Survival'.  Comment on Education, December, 1980, pp. 24-31.

 Miller, Bruce A.  The Multi-Grade Classroom: A Resource Handbook For Small, Rural Schools.  Cambridge, MA, 1983.

 Nachbar, Randa Roen.  "A K/1 Class Can Work Wonderfully!"  Young Children, 44 (July 1989):  67-71.

 Riggs, Frank.  Small Schools Study Project: Final Report. (1987).            .  Small Schools Survey:  Background Report No. 1. (1986a).

               .  Small Schools Survey:  Background Report No. 3. (1986b).

 Sher, J.P.  "Education's Ugly Duckling:  Rural Schools in Urban Nations".  Manitoba Rural School Review, Fall, 1985, pp. 22-28.