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The Minister for Education intends to bring in legislation that will raise the school-leaving age to eighteen. I will support that legislation. I agree with his action. However, I also recognize that this is the Minister’s last desperate throw of the dice. In the crap game of life, the Minister — may God give peace and rest to his tortured soul — is hoping and praying for the dice to roll a seven or eleven in any combination.
    Everything — but one thing — has been done or tried. New buildings have been built. Class sizes have been reduced. Teacher to student ratios have been increased. Scores of new programmes have been tried. Foreign ‘axperts’ have been hired and their reports have been successively used and then discarded. Foreign ‘consultants’ have been hired — Dr Johnson is merely the latest — and each consultant has done what most consultants do. Find out what the ‘client’ wants to hear, then find the poly-syllabic words and convoluted phrases that best turn a simple reality into complex gobbledegook.
    The one thing that has not been tried is simple public honesty. In the past 20 years no UBP or PLP Minister has been honest and open about education.  In the past twenty years no senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education has been honest and open about education.   
    What’s honest? Here’s what’s honest. To start with, remember that public or private, all students in Bermuda start formal education at age five.
    At Saltus, at Warwick Academy, and at Bermuda High School, the average age at which their students sit the General Certificate of Secondary Education [GCSE] exam is 15 to 16. They sit these GCSE exams at the equivalent of public sector grade S2. The GCSE was the old standard for graduation from High School. However, at Saltus, at Warwick Academy, and at Bermuda High School; these schools now use the higher level and globally accepted and globally known International Baccalaureate [IB] or the U.S.’s Advanced Placement [AP] courses as their graduation standards.
    At Saltus, at Warwick Academy, and at Bermuda High School, the average age at which their students sit the IB or AP exam is 17 to 18. The total time spent in the private sector is thirteen years.
    What happens in the public sector?
Lower standard
The public sector also graduates its students after thirteen years, when students are in S4. The average age in S4 is 17 to 18. At the end of these thirteen years, when a student is 17 to 18, the public sector gives the Bermuda School Certificate [BSC] to the students who have met the standards set and required by the BSC.
    The BSC’s standard is BELOW that of the GCSE.  This fact is admitted by Bermuda’s educators. This fact is recognized by Bermuda’s employers. No one denies this fact.
    So what’s honest is that the public education system operates TWO YEARS behind the private sector and, after taking two extra years, still turns out a lower quality product.
    Until now, bored, disaffected, or unwilling public school students have been able to legally play ‘hooky’ once they turned seventeen. No one could lawfully compel them to come to school or to stay in school.
    So I support the Minister’s planned action. I support it.
    What I don’t support is the fact that no one in the ministry is addressing the 20-year-old problem of education standards. No one is even remotely hinting at the possibility of at least TALKING ABOUT the possibility and desirability of delivering a higher standard of instruction to all the children — 80 per cent of whom are black — in the public system.
    Honestly? After 13 years, the public school student now only gets about 75 per cent or three quarters of what the private school student will have received.
    This is the 20-year-old, untold tale. This is the fact that the Minister, the Ministry, and Dr Johnson are NOT dealing with as they prattle on about curricula and subjects and reporting and new boards and new committees and getting ‘buy-in’.This is the fact that raising the school-leaving age will still not deal with.
    Until the Minister and Ministry deal with this reality, they are merely playing a crappy crap game, rolling bad dice, and throwing your tax dollars around and losing every time.
    I have been honest. I wish the Minister and his cohorts would be as honest.
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