January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.

Inept education system creating an underclass


An article in the August 2nd edition of the 'New York Times' said that many U.S. states "set a goal of graduating fewer than 60 per cent of their students."

Another piece in the 'Scotsman' newspaper's August 18 edition stated, "just 43 per cent of second-year (S2) pupils ... achieved the expected standard in reading."

That makes Bermuda's rates of 38 per cent to 55 per cent not so bad, right?

Wrong!

It isn't the percentages, it's the real numbers.

Here's why.

At the end of high school, Bermuda's national non-graduation rate is about 20 per cent. But the public education system 'graduates' people who have a BSSC. The BSSC is not equal to a GCSE or International Baccalaureate Diploma - both of which are available through private education systems in Bermuda.

The BSSC does not equate to a good U.S. high school diploma.

So the number of Bermudian kids who do not meet the standards of a good U.S. high school diploma is actually greater than 20 per cent.

The reality? More like 40 per cent of Bermuda's total high school graduating group - that's everybody (public and private) - don't reach the standard equivalent to that required for a U.S. high school diploma.

So the average 658 Bermudian kids who start out are reduced to about 395 who actually graduate with a diploma or certificate that at least equates to a good U.S. high school diploma, and 263 who do not reach that standard.

But that means that 60 per cent do. So we must be doing okay, right? So what's all the fuss about? The fuss is about reality. Always reality.

Annually, U.S. high schools - even at low 50 per cent graduation rates - will still graduate about 2 million people who have high school diplomas. When these 2 million start looking for work, they look for work in essentially the same global market in which our kids seek work.

So our total 395 good graduates are competing with 2 million U.S. graduates (Don't believe me? Look around you. See how many non-Bermudians working in Bermuda).

Equally, our 263 non-graduates or below-standard graduates are competing in the same marketplace. Our 263 failures are also competing with the 2 million successful U.S. graduates.

But Bermuda has workers from the U.K. too. So Bermuda's 658 students compete for jobs, in Bermuda, with the 250,000 students who've graduated from U.K. schools.

So our 395 successes as well as our 263 failures are competing with the successes of the U.K.'s educating system.

Bermuda has workers from India, Canada, Jamaica, Barbados. Our 395 graduates as well as the 263 non-graduates, are competing, in Bermuda, with students who graduate from the high school systems of 20 other countries. (The 'Scotsman' report covered 6,750 S2 students. This means that 2,900 Scottish students, or 43 per cent did meet the standard).

Under-serving Bermuda

In reality? Every aspect of our education system - particularly the public education system - is under-serving the whole country.

Bermuda's education system is putting Bermudians at a disadvantage when Bermudians start competing with the average high school graduate from the rest of the developed, and developing, world.

Bermuda's under-educated and under-trained young people get shoved out into a highly competitive high-demand island economy. In that economy, they cannot - and they do not - do well in the competition for jobs.

We can be complacent about percentages. We can pat ourselves on the back and arithmetically inflate our success. But that doesn't shift the reality of the marketplace. In the marketplace, visible talent and apparent skill gets hired. In the marketplace, lack of visible talent or lack of apparent skill means 'hustle truck' or equivalent future.

Percentages tell that something is 'changing'. But the real number is what's important.

In reality? Every year we have to get our 263 non-graduating Bermudian kids into our business platform's workplace. Reality? These 263 Bermudian non-graduates are competing, in Bermuda, with the millions of non-Bermudian graduates from sometimes low quality public education systems in a dozen other countries (look around you!)

Core problem? Our island's hundreds are competing against hundreds of thousands. They're like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Difference is, our Spartans are ill-equipped as well as outnumbered.

Now it's beginning to look like we won't start the drastic revamping that's needed. It looks like we'll go on enlarging a now highly visible Bermudian underclass.

We'll go on spending about $3.6 million a year creating this - mostly black - Bermudian underclass. We'll go on actually paying other Bermudians to create a social time-bomb that contains the highly explosive ingredient of apparent racial discrimination.

Increasingly, it looks like we're just carrying on with this national stupidity![[In-content Ad]]

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