School vouchers would work in Bermuda
August 30, 2012
Dear Sir,
The state of Illinois now has an education voucher programme. According to the Economist, a couple of years ago a public schoolgirl, whose parents could not afford private education, walked into a private school and told them she had heard about the voucher option. She had heard she could go to the private school with money from a voucher that would redeem the money spent by the government on her public education. The private school had heard nothing about it, but they looked into it; it turned out she was right. Now she goes to the private school and is thinking about college.
It costs the Bermuda Government $20,900 to send each public schoolchild to public senior school according to this paper’s report on the budget. It costs around $16,000 to send a child to Warwick Academy, widely considered the most diverse and complete education on the island. If we had a voucher programme, children to could go to private school, and still have money left over for a very nice laptop computer. And all those parents who did send their children to private school would not be paying for education twice — once for the government system in taxes and once to the private school. Why do parents pay twice for education in Bermuda, a country where roughly half the student population is in private school? Because public education in Bermuda is ranked slightly below the US which lags the rest of the developed world.
There are solutions to education out there. Vouchers is one of them. Successive Bermuda governments have pointlessly agonised and done nothing except build enormous expensive schools. Why this inexplicable lassitude? Lack of motivation. The voters don’t care. But big expensive schools look like something is getting done. As Pogo says: We have seen the enemy and he is us. Education is not a part of the economy. In a country where the only natural resource a Bermudian has is other Bermudians, education is the economy.
JOHN ZUILL
Paget
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Published Sep 1, 2012 at 7:06 am (Updated Sep 1, 2012 at 7:05 am)