Government appears to be moving forward with its education reforms and also plans to have amendments to the Education Act passed by the end of this summer.

So far, the two most controversial aspects of the Government's plans appear to be the move to extend the school leaving age to 18 and to create school boards for "clusters" of schools.

The rationale for increasing the school leaving age is to ensure that students remain in school long enough to graduate. That seems fair enough on the surface, although students who have really lost interest in education still may not graduate just because they are forced to stay in school longer.

That will only happen if the true value of education is demonstrated to them and the quality of teaching and curriculum is such that they actually become enthused about their education.

An equally strong case could be made for having students start school a year earlier. At least two private schools, Saltus and Somersfield, already accept students at the age of four or younger, and the British national curriculum requires students to start at the age of four in a foundation year which eases the process of school entry.

One reason that Saltus gave for launching its foundation year was the unevenness of incoming pupils' attainment when they entered Primary One. It is reasonable to assume that this problem is even more pronounced for Government primary schools.

The other controversial aspect of Government's plans is to effectively abolish the trustees of the four aided schools and create governing boards for six clusters of schools; one for the two secondary schools and five for the Island's five middle schools and the primary schools which feed into them.

The Hopkins report singled out the aided schools as being among the most successful on the Island, and the clusters appear to be an attempt to duplicate this success without creating 26 individual school boards.

In the interests of full disclosure, the Editor of this newspaper is a trustee of Whitney Institute Middle School, one of the four aided schools along with Berkeley Institute, St. George's Prep and Sandys Secondary Middle School.

Each of the aided schools is unique in their structure and the degree to which they own their properties. But they generally have the same rights, including the right to appoint principals and staff, along with some autonomy over the maintenance of the schools.

The fact that the Ministry of Education oversees some aided schools as well as those wholly owned and operated by Government might seem anomalous, and the current proposals seem to be an attempt to take the best features of the aided schools and to transplant them to the maintained schools.

But a great many questions remain, not least what rights and responsibilities the aided schools' governing boards would retain under the new arrangement.

At the same time, it is not altogether clear what rights the cluster boards would have, how they would be appointed and held accountable and just how much autonomy they would enjoy.

Nor is it entirely clear why Government did not consider appointing boards of governors for all of the Island's schools, if the aided schools model was seen to be working.

To be sure, this would create some administrative headaches, but at the moment, the administration of the cluster boards is equally opaque.

The risk is that this plan, in trying to get the best of both worlds, will end up with the worst instead.