Getting rid of incompetent teachers and clearing dead wood out of the Ministry of Education should be the priority for improving the dismal schools system, said activist Myron Piper.

Mr. Piper — who is compiling ideas on education reform for Bermuda Democratic Alliance — said children are being let down by adults who don't care enough whether they reach their full potential.

He told The Royal Gazette if he was in charge he would effectively disband the Ministry of Education, which has overseen much-publicised failure for years, and replace it with a committee made up of people from the community and schools.

And he said Bermuda needs to weed out the teachers who allow children to underachieve, importing better replacements from overseas if they can't be found locally.

Asked what he would do if he was leading Bermuda's education system, Mr. Piper said: "Get rid of the Ministry of Education."

He said the replacement committee would include a representative of parents, teachers, principals, the union and a business person to help with budgeting.

"I would disband all the existing people that are there. Make them redundant. Maybe we would have to pay them off," said Mr. Piper, who founded Bermuda Educational Parents' Association last year.

"Some of them are people that have been there for years and are part of the meltdown, but they have been promoted to better levels in the Ministry, which to me seems ludicrous because they are responsible as a body or group for the meltdown."

Mr. Piper said the Hopkins Report showed many people in the Ministry have been promoted on the grounds of cronyism, nepotism and paternalism, and that key recommendations of the damning review have not been implemented.

"When we look at the people leading the transition of reform, I don't see enough energy and passion," he said. "Without passion, people don't have the drive to get things done.

"We all know the education system is failing. That's a given, everyone accepts that. We are embracing the same concepts over and over and over but we are not doing anything about it.

"People are there for the wrong reasons. They are there to hold a job for security as opposed to serve the needs of the children."

As a father-of-two, he witnessed first-hand how some teachers are not up to the job.

"There were times when they failed to keep my kids engaged and motivated," he said.

"Once I confronted them and told them. They didn't recognise the fact that they were dealing with children that were more capable. If they operated at average or above average standards the teachers thought that was OK."

He said some teachers upped their game after that, but others didn't.

"You have to be seeking teachers with talent and make it worth their while to teach," he said.

"I would say that the talented teachers are probably in the minority. We have to identify these (poorer) teachers and get them out of the system.

"If we really want to make things work, some people are just going to have to be asked to leave.

"A lot of the blame seems to be on parents but, although parents are culpable, teachers are the professionals. They are paid to achieve an outcome.

"Education is about watching and learning. If you don't have that happening, the buck stops with the teachers."

Mr. Piper, the BDA's likely candidate for St. David's at the next General Election, said he would put in place a method of measuring teachers' performance to see who gets the chop.

His other recommendations include dropping the Cambridge curriculum, which he says does not align with Bermuda's system, and introducing a consistent way of reporting results.