Prospect principal

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A furore has arisen over the decision to place a temporary executive principal at Prospect Primary School.

This has occurred because the Ministry of Education has become concerned about underperformance at the school and test scores have shown intervention is required. And according to the Ministry, there have already been interventions at the school and there will be additional support provided to the school now to assist in areas where it needs help.

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this. There has been a demand in the community for improved teaching and better schools. And where teachers or principals are failing to perform, the consensus is that they should first get support, and if that fails, they should be replaced. After all, if they are allowed to continue to underperform week after week and year after year, the biggest losers are the children.

One of the challenges is that objective qualitative data is hard to find in schools. And educators always seem to have a problem with quantitative data such as tests. Either they are supposed to test aptitude instead of achievement, or they don’t test the whole student, or they are not based on the curriculum, or they are “foreign”, or they don’t take account of the students’ social backgrounds.

All of these concerns have some validity, but in the end, you have to judge schools by some standards, and in a system as small as Bermuda’s, judging performance from one school to another should not be that difficult.

And there’s not much wrong with the idea that a principal who is having great success at one school should not be able bring the benefit of their experience and knowledge to another school.

So what’s all the fuss about at Prospect Primary School? First, at least one parent thinks the school has been improving and that the principal, Dr Shangri-la Durham Thompson, puts the school first, even when this causes discomfort for the teachers at the school. Secondly, the Association of School Principals says that very little notice was given for the appointment of the executive principal, and that it is breach of their collective agreement.

That may or may not be so. The Ministry reserves the right to appoint a mentor or executive principal when the circumstances dictate. What the ASP does appear to have done is prevent the Ministry from using principals from other schools, as originally planned at Prospect.

It may be that more notice should have been given, and it is difficult to pass judgment on this without seeing the actual results. That’s one argument in favour of full transparency publishing every school’s results annually. But on the whole, if the school’s results are less than satisfactory, then this is a reasonable step for the Ministry to take if it helps to improve the performance of the principal and the school.

The Ministry has said it expects results to improve quickly as a result of these moves. It now has an obligation to inform the parents and the public if that has in fact occurred. If it does not, then this policy will need to be looked at again.

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