Dear Sir,

Up until 1993, mostly all the secondary schools on the Island had a measure of competition in terms of grading system and how much teaching meant towards each student.

Some schools weren’t as highly recognised as others, but the schooling system still survived.

Thing is, three schools were in bad shape (Berkeley, St George’s Secondary and Devonshire Academy) and they needed renovating.

The UBP when they were in charge had other ideas and decided to not only renovate, but change Berkeley’s location, change St George’s Secondary into a rest home for seniors, and destroy what’s left of Devonshire Academy, with only Ruth Seaton James remaining as the last of such history.

What happened afterwards was like a nightmare waiting to happen. Whitney Institute and other schools stupidly became middle schools, despite us being a British Overseas Territory.

What’s even worse is the fact we were suffering with financial woes at the time (and building two museum-like schools wasn’t going to help the matter much). Sadly as time continued, even Bermuda Tech got destroyed and even after the PLP was in charge sometime afterwards, nothing was put back in place.

The schools, as stupid as they looked with that same stupid American school system, never changed while they were in charge (it’s like they didn’t even care). And it has sadly led to now where, entering the 2015 school year, the only merging will be two preschools merging with two primary schools.

No Whitney becoming a secondary school again, no more Warwick Secondary returning, not even the return of Sandys Secondary.

Gone are all the times when schools made sense (you can say what you like about the achievements at CedarBridge but, graduating students who can barely read or write ... even tie their own shoes is no reason to clap despite the high marks for their auditorium and motor mechanics department).

They changed the uniforms and people must shop at an expensive store because cheaper ones don’t sell them ... money became more important than just simply teaching. And this thing about teachers being the only ones to wear school cardigans with logos is weak (why would a teacher need a cardigan with a school logo when they ought to be wearing one without one?).

And it just keeps getting worse (had the public school system remained British, schools wouldn’t be failing).

ANONYMOUS