Bullying in Bermuda's schools is leading to teenage gangs and graduating into serious social unrest, not high school diplomas.

This according to a long-serving Ministry of Education staff who does not wish to be named for fear of his job, but said he needed to speak-out after watching more of his students get their GED in Co-Ed than their diplomas from high school.

It is a trend that the staff member said is not being appropriately targeted by the current education reform and he has struggled to reach students as the violence has just escalated over the last seven to eight years.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette yesterday he said: "They take the licks before entering the gang, but they don't have support from home or great grades so their rap becomes everything.

"Anything that insults your manhood you will draw down (fight) for it and when you get out (of high school) you will die for it.

"That's the trend. It's the bullying, territory thing (country versus town) that has come about and that brings a lot of it.

"This is what the younger ones are doing. It's getting overwhelming because it's like year after year. We have had this system for maybe 11 or 12 years and even though there was the fighting early-on the town and country (territorial rivalry) was not quite as strong.

"Maybe within the last seven or eight years children have taken on much more of the territorial mentality. It's a system problem and that's where people are not making the connections.

"We are talking about 14 or 15 year-olds having fights.These children are turning into men and having pretty serious complications. Let's put it back to the senior schools."Curriculum is going to benefit (from the reform) but right now I have a better chance of a kid getting it (a degree) through co-ed than school."

In the most recent spate of violence to plague the schools a 14-year-old Berkeley boy was sent to the hospital with injuries to his face by three of his schoolmates in October.

They had previously been in detention with the boy and early one Saturday morning they jumped the victim while he was walking past the senior school.

At the time, former EducationMinister Randy Horton said that the Student Services Department at the school was asked to step up their efforts to promote anti-violence.Adding that the Ministry was also working to review and strengthen life skills and character education programmes while also taking an all-out assault on gangs.

And in the Throne Speech on November 7, the Government highlighted the problems in the schools and said that "recognised, successful strategies will be developed to match the anti-social behaviour in the school setting and will range from conversations with those responsible through to prosecution in the worst cases. "

However, in September this year the mother of a 15-year-old boy said she was planning legal action against the Ministry because her son was asked not to return to CedarBridge even though he was the one who ended up with a nine-inch gash on his face

According to a letter seen by this paper, the acting Permanent Secretary of Education, Randell Tankard, offered the 15-year-old a position with Youth and Sport doing landscaping with tutoring on the side.

This solution, or another case where young teens have been advised to pursue the Adult Education Centre or The Education Centre (TEC), is exactly what the Ministry should not be doing, said the Ministry staff member.

While acknowledging that the Adult Education Centre and TEC do good work, he said the 14 and 15-year-olds need to be encouraged to finish high school.

One way to do this would be to install more psychologists, speech pathologists, behaviour therapists and community officers in the schools, said the Ministry staff.

However, he has not seen this approach in the Ministry reform and the schools are trying to survive through the gang behaviour until the students graduate or they are transitioned out of the system.

"We want everyone to be in school until they are 18. How do you do that when you put them out at 15?" he added, "There's a disconnect somewhere from all systems.

"Everyone wants the children to succeed, but they are not going about it in the commonsense way. They can change the Ministers and the Permanent Secretaries and it won't be better.

"The people who are right in there are not changing. We need something that meets their (the behaviour challenged student's) needs and to keep them in and hanging onto children as long as possible, but teachers are getting stressed out and the children are falling behind.

"It's not just a matter of it's going to be a problem. It is a problem."