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Jake reads long stories easily and fluently. His voice changes tone and style as he conveys the feelings of one character or another. I believe that’s still called ‘reading with expression’. Jake is six and in his first year in the public education system.

Olivia read me the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’.

She read quickly, stumbling every now and again but easily ‘sounding’ her way through the words and picking up speed again.

She reckoned that ‘Goldilocks’ had behaved properly and shouldn’t have done what she is said to have done.

Clearly, Olivia understood the story line. Olivia is six and in her first year in the public education system.

Both children attend schools that do not rank in the top half of the national rankings.

So now you know that the public education system is not Bermuda’s public education system.

But the system that these two children attend is a public education system that always publishes school results, and allows the taxpaying public and school selecting parents to see how their neighbourhood school performs.

Jake and Olivia’s education system is operating on a small island.

People who are educated in that small island’s public education system do come to Bermuda to work.

Thus, these people compete, successfully, with other people from their home country, and then, in a second round of competition, they compete, successfully, with Bermudians, to ‘win’ the job that they finally get in Bermuda.

In other countries, Goa, India, Barbados, there are many other children — millions of them — who are also in public education. We see a part, just a small part, of the output of these other national public education systems as they too, compete — first with one another, then with Bermudians — to win jobs in Bermuda.

Bermuda’s switch to ‘IB’ has combined with an obvious and large influx of graduates of other countries’ public education systems.

It’s obvious, then, that the performance of students in the county system in Podunk County, U.S. has some importance to the performance of the students at Berkeley and Cedarbridge; and in Bermuda’s middle schools; and Bermuda’s primary schools.

The same thing applies to students in the public systems in Goa, India and Barbados.

Bermuda’s students are in a global competition. A global competition in which — as at the Commonwealth Games — fourth place is good but doesn’t win a medal. It’s a global competition in which the best person — not the third or second best — gets the job.

A global competition in which only winning counts.

Bermudians who can’t afford to pay the — relatively cheaper — costs of Bermuda’s private education system must still see their children on graduation (if they graduate!) compete on equal terms with students from the public systems of Goa, India and Barbados.

In addition, these students must also compete with the students coming out of the lower cost education systems at Saltus, BHS, MSA, BI, and Warwick Academy.

None of our athletes at the Commonwealth games won any medals. Each of our athletes did his or her best.

They competed in a sporting event. Everybody knew the results of all their endeavours. That knowledge has harmed no one.

High stakes

Our children are competing in a far more serious life event.

A life event in which the winners get the best or better jobs and the losers get ‘other’ work or no work.

Our athletes prepared themselves by hard effort, and by closely examining their preparation performances.

We must prepare our children in the same way.

So? Publish the results of Bermuda’s public education system. Let the facts loose.

Give our students the same quality of chance that our athletes had.

Don’t spend those thirteen years from five to eighteen handicapping our students and parents by concealing the results of those years spent in the public education system and not helping the whole system — parents, students, teachers — to reform itself.

Give our own Bermudian kids the best opportunity that our resources can give them. Publish school results!

P.S. Olivia attends Gatten and Lake Primary school in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight…look it up and see where the school stands.[[In-content Ad]]

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