?When I was a student, it was school,? Michelle Simmons says of The Berkeley Institute, the school she has led for more than 13 years and which she attended herself in the 1960s.

She tells how able students were turned away from Berkeley because of the demand for places; only the cleverest got through the gates.

?It has undergone a number of changes,? says Mrs. Simmons. ?We are now no longer a selective school and we have to recognise that but it doesn?t mean we should offer any less of a quality programme.

?Now we have students of all abilities. People should not expect this to be the same school as it was. But it will again be the school of choice.?

Her pride in the school is palpable ? from the way she talks to parents as they wander into the new building during Berkeley?s orientation week for senior one pupils, from the way she beams as she spots teachers lugging boxes of books around and from the way she talks of her own time as a student from 1963 to 1968.

She is even proud that her husband, the Rev. Dr. Erskine Simmons, whom she married in May, and his two children, Dr. Carol Simmons Brevett and April Simmons Critchlow, are Berkeleyites.

?I did not expect that I would be back at Berkeley as principal of the school but I really feel that this was something that I was meant to do,? she says.

?There are so many reasons why I say that. First of all I was very appreciative of all that my teachers at Berkeley did for me and that includes Berkeley?s first Bermudian principal, Frederick S. Furbert. He was not just principal, he was also our teacher. His contribution to my education is immeasurable in terms of the academics that he taught but also just through the life that he lived.

?I also count Mrs. Eloise Furbert, his wife, as one of my favourite teachers. I was blessed to have so many great teachers. It?s my passion to ensure that Berkeley should become again the school of choice in Bermuda.?

One of the ways Mrs. Simmons intends to do that is by continuing to recruit committed, capable teachers. She has just taken on 17 new members of staff for the start of this term.

?We need to make sure our staff are committed to working with everyone who attends this school to push them to achieve their best,? she says.

Another strategy aimed at increasing the graduation rate is ending social promotion, as revealed in last week. Mrs. Simmons has yet to receive the reaction of students to the plan to stop them from moving up a school year with their classmates if they fail to achieve a required number of credits, but she says parents should back it.

?Sometimes I don?t think that people have always fully understood that each year the credits that students earn go towards their final credits,? she says. ?We have had people at the end being very negative in terms of receiving news that their child has not graduated when they haven?t fully understood that you need the credits year by year.?

She believes that parents have a key part to play in improving Berkeley. ?Family plays a critical role,? she explains. ?You can almost predict the success of a young person based on the involvement of the family.

?If there are people in a children?s life who commit to being there for that child, supporting him or her as they grow into adolescence and then into young adults, then to me it doesn?t matter whether it?s mother and father, mother or father, parents, grandparents, stepfathers and stepmothers, as long as the adult is prepared to commit to support that child.?

She says attendance at parent-teacher conferences is improving and was delighted at the large number of senior one parents who attended an orientation evening last month.

?We want to see that sustained over a four-year period. We expect to see parents at Parent-Teacher-Student Association meetings held the first Tuesday of every month. We expect to see them when we call them in to share important information with them about the programme. They will be essential in making sure that their children are able to learn as much as they can.?

Berkeley has seen its graduation rate rise this year to almost 70 percent ? a marked improvement on last year?s 61 percent pass rate.

But Mrs. Simmons says there is still a long way to go and urges everyone working in public education to raise the bar. ?Many students come to us well prepared but we also get a large number of students who we have to work with to bring them up to the standard they should have been at. That?s why we have the learning support department.

?I?m sure that the middle schools have challenges just as we have at the senior level. I really think throughout this system all of us need to work harder to make sure that we are ensuring that our students are well prepared at every level to move on. We know in this mixed ability population that we have many students that need additional support and time.?

Mrs. Simmons also wants to see more Berkeleyites involved in the school?s progress. ?I think a big piece of what we have to do is increase our networking within the Berkeley alumni. We are preparing these young people to go out into a community and be part of the workforce so through networking with our community partners we are able to understand their needs and enlist their support.?

Like many Berkeleyites, Mrs. Simmons left the school not intending to return. She attended the Academic Sixth Form Centre at Prospect before travelling to the University of Liverpool in the UK to do a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry.

She did her postgraduate certificate of education at Reading University but then decided to return to Bermuda and her alma mater, Berkeley, to teach chemistry and biology from 1975 to 1978.

Mrs. Simmons then travelled to London to teach at the Latimer School in Enfield for two-and-a-half years, before working at a sixth form college in Nigeria for a year-and-a-half.

She came back to Bermuda and taught for ten years at Bermuda High School for Girls, becoming head of the secondary department. Finally, in January 1993, the lure of Berkeley once again proved irresistible and she was appointed headteacher.

She claims her time in both the private and public education sector has opened her eyes to the way the media treats non-fee paying schools.

?When something negative happens in a public school it?s as though people are having a feast,? she says. ?But our children do not deserve to all be categorised by the inappropriate choices one or two may have made.

?I really think the press are sometimes unfair here to students in public education. Aren?t we all human beings?

?Even though the schools are public entities it doesn?t mean that we are less human than people in the private schools. It just means that we expect to be treated fairly. That?s all I ask for.?

She won?t be drawn on the negative headlines surrounding the controversy over the building of the new school, which will open three years after originally intended next week, having cost millions of dollars more than first envisaged.

* See Monday?s edition of for more in this series.