Vexed Bermoothes

Like most local parents, I have heard so much official prevarication over the public education system that I profoundly distrust the Ministry of Education. So much money, so many excuses, and so little achieved.

Bermuda’s new education consultant Henry Johnson has earned my attention by cutting through the spin:

• He has admitted that it may take years to turn around the system. He is not promising miracle turnarounds in the statistics (unlike the hapless Minister Horton who gave a press conference yesterday to deny that the statistics were fudged, then to admit that they were, and finally to exhort that statistics weren’t important anyway).
• He has admitted that the local statistics on graduation rates are misleading and proposes that Bermuda adopt the “cohort” system used elsewhere (where the annual graduation rate is found by dividing the number of on-time graduates by the number of students who entered high school for the first time four years earlier).
• He supports publishing results on a school-by-school basis to improve accountability and ensure that adequate resources are directed as issues are spotted.
• He has admitted that the Bermuda School Certificate (BSC) is of questionable rigor and value, and may need replaced by an internationally recognised qualification. His view was shared in the recent Hopkins Report, which gave the damning assessment that the BSC denotes “a demonstrable though fairly low level of achievement”.

We must support the reform of this system. Increasing the number of Bermudian high school graduates who go on to technical school and university will do more for our local community than any degree of Government social engineering. Successful education not only brings financial success, it restores the hope that seems so distant for many young Bermudians.