As the new school year starts today, The Royal Gazette asks: Is the public education system capable of giving Bermuda's children the start in life they need for their future?

It's a new school year and thousands of students will walk through that big door with new uniforms, backpacks and lunch boxes.

But are the teachers ready? Are the students ready? Is the new curriculum ready?

Those questions were put to Education Minister El James, Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons, Bermuda Union of Teachers general secretary Mike Charles and Bermuda Educational Parents Association chairman Myron Piper.

Dr. Gibbons said more work needs to be done to the system including implementing the ten Hopkins Report recommendations.

The Hopkins Report, which came out in 2007, said the public education system was "on the brink of meltdown".

"While I believe there is great potential in Bermuda's public education system, in its present form it's not giving Bermuda's children the educational foundation they need for their future.

"That certainly was the broad conclusion of the Hopkins Report delivered over two years ago and its finding that the education system was 'on the brink of meltdown'. The report laid out in detail where the public system was failing both students and the community."

Dr. Gibbons also spoke about low graduation rates, more students moving to private schools and a general loss of confidence in the public system by the community and businesses.

"This is in spite of the fact that there are a lot of very good teachers, principals and education staff that work within the present system and the fact that we're now spending over $22,000 annually to educate a student in the public system."

The Shadow Education Minister said the quality of teaching needs to be "dramatically" improved and more focus on preschool education is needed.

"Education is key to economic opportunity, particularly in a service-based economy like Bermuda. A dysfunctional public system will be felt in a very personal way by young Bermudians."

Mr. Charles said the education system could be improved.

"The system is capable. It might need a few tweaks to it but it's capable. One of the things I have always contended is we need to pay attention to preschools. From this union's point of view, preschools should be mandatory.

"We have government preschools but it is not mandatory. This is where the job comes in. What it is, you have students coming to school in P1 who are at varying points of academics. You have students who know their numbers, alphabet and can write their name. You have other students who, if you wrote their name in big letters, they wouldn't know what it was."

Mr. Charles said the teacher is then left to pick up the pieces and perform magic with students who aren't up to par.

"Some students are starting behind. If it is mandatory there would have to be a curriculum set up for that age so that everyone comes into P1 at the same level. Right now you can send your child to a nursery where they do nothing but play and sit. You have those who had the advantage of having a structured environment."

Mr. Charles suggests one large preschool be built instead of having them strewn about the Island and spoke about the need for more professional development for teachers.

"It has been shown that when you have top-notch teachers, you have better students. Teachers need to have more time off to attend professional development training. It has to be done during the school day.

"These are some of the things that can be done immediately to improve our schools. We have a lot of good things being done on our schools but we only see the negative."

Mr. Piper disagreed, arguing that the current system isn't capable of providing Bermuda's children a good start.

"As the public education system presently exists it is not capable of providing our kids with the necessary tools to succeed in a competitive environment. This is evidenced by the fact that we have scrapped every initiative put in place over the last three years in order to adopt the Cambridge Curriculum. Yet, we have not seen the leadership necessary to accomplish any present or future endeavours to fix the system."

Mr. Piper claimed the people who were targeted to be fired in the Hopkins report have been promoted. He credits these ministry officials with the present failure of the education system.

And he questioned why Bermudians living overseas who are successful in education haven't been asked to help out.

"Instead we have taken those persons at the senior level from a previously dysfunctional system and rewarded their failures with promotion giving them more responsibility and power yet we expect better results, ludicrous. With all the chopping and changing with educational programmes I am developing a lot of empathy for teachers being expected to constantly change to adopt the whims of the Ministry.

"In order for us to overcome the present dilemma we need equal support from all stakeholders. There has to be an ideological buy in. There has to be total agreement with parents, teachers, union leaders, students and the Ministry that we will be successful in accomplishing our goal to overhaul the education system."

He continued: "There isn't anything that anyone can come up with that would be the perfect solution, but we can come up with a workable solution. We need to commit to improvement and not get caught up in self enrichment.

"Hopefully, this will translate into being better role models for our children by being responsible leaders. Our children learn much through imitation. We cannot charge them with doing the right things if we don't hold ourselves to a higher standard. Responsibility is leading by example."

Mr. James did not respond by press time, but has previously said the public education system is 'on fire'.

"Well, with any report, progress is normally very slow but I think we are going very well right now," said Mr. James. We're on the move.

"It took a while to get going but now that we are moving, we're looking forward to this September when we start the soft launch of the Cambridge International Curriculum. So we're satisfied that we are definitely on track and that we are going to make a difference in education.

"I think I would rather say what we think we're doing right. We believe that we're doing some right things right now. Improving what's already here and adding to it."