The United Bermuda Party will educate children on an individual basis rather than the 'failed', one-size-fits-all approach of the Progressive Labour Party Government, shadow Education Minister Tim Smith told MPs in the House of Assembly, yesterday.

Mr. Smith said the UBP would introduce fundamental reforms to increase the emphasis on each student and their parent.

And the UBP would make teachers, principals and boards more accountable to ensure better results, and increase flexibility and a greater sense of autonomy for schools.

There would be an individual education process to "develop talent, one child at a time". The UBP supported Government's planned parental responsibility bill, although it needed to see the details.

And parents would need to sign a contract ensuring they understood the expectations of schools, their own and their child's responsibilities within the education system.

The "carrot" to be offered with the "stick" of the parental responsibility act, under the UBP's plans, would be a "parent coordinator" in each school.

Mr. Smith said the PLP's fundamentals were wrong and that its failed programme after four years was "as good as it gets".

**"I believe their ideals for education are feeble and woefully inadequate, the PLP's Throne Speech vision for education is visionless," he said.

"The fundamentals are all wrong and that is why we will continue to see parents choosing private education over public education; why we will see more good teachers leaving the profession; and why we will not be preparing our children for the real future that lies ahead for them."

He accused the PLP of secrecy for holding a meeting with the Board of Education, teachers, students and administrators in August to draw up a new education strategy, yet he had just heard about it.

And he said Government owed parents and students at Berkeley Institute an explanation as to why the school was behind schedule and why students would need to study with construction work going on outside.

The PLP promised to return authority to teachers but this proved to be "lip service," he said, and the problems of education, with "unprecedented" ten teacher protests in four years, about much further than pay demands.

He said the PLP's "lack of urgency" over education was a political ploy because they wanted to tell voters they needed five more years in power to achieve achieve their reforms.

Mr. Smith said it was unbelievable that in 2002, teachers were still having to dig into their own pockets to buy classroom materials.

***"With the UBP government, we will raise academic standards. We will make sure teachers feel valued. We will give authority to principals to run their schools. We will get parents excited once again about public education."

The UBP vision was education "one child at a time", rather than the "cookie cutter"approach of the PLP, to recognise children developed at different speeds.

The UBP would put "specialist teams in each school to provide academic, study and social support for each school and each student.

He did not believe boys were underachieving compared to girls, but there was "something fundamentally wrong with our education system when it fails to engage boys".

The UBP would return the "Bermuda Tech" schooling, which it had abolished, to ensure there is a "programme of study that engages our boys rather than casting them aside as underachievers".

A fundamental challenge of education was to identify the interests of individual students to set them on the right career path. This would ensure Bermudians didn't keep switching jobs constantly solely to make more money.

He described the PLP's Throne speech commitment to centralising school boards as "driven from the centre", which would exacerbate problems. The objective was to decentralise power out to the schools.

And he said the UBP government would establish a character and citizenship curriculum beginning at pre-school to ensure that students became valuable members of society, and he said the Opposition would eliminate social promotion.

He said: "Should students who have not quite mastered certain basic skills advance to the next year level? I say no.

**"Children must graduate with some form of international accreditation. The Smith Government talks about setting high academic standards, but it's just talk."

And he said real success was being accountable and taking responsibility.

He said the UBP would: "Establish strong academic standards for what a child should know and learn in reading and math immediately, develop standards for science by the 2006 school year.

"School performance will be publicly reported. Schools themselves will be responsible for improving the academic performance of all their students.

***"Our approach to teacher recruitment and development can be summed up in the principle: hire the best, fire the worst and develop the rest.

"We would make a significant investment in teacher development (ten percent of education budget in three years).

"And there would be a major shift to performance-based pay for teachers. The Bermuda Union of Teachers would be invited as joint architects of a comprehensive review and rewrite of Bermuda's out-of-date compensation structure that remains unrelated to what teachers do in the classroom, and new rewards for teachers who produce exceptional students."

Mr. Smith said the reason many parents chose private schools for their children was because those schools were accountable, whereas public schools were not.

But he said making public schools more accountable would raise standards dramatically.

And he said the Ministry of Education should change its role, so that it no longer tried to manage and operate education, but instead provide funding and inspect school performance against standards.

He said: "Schools will have more freedom to direct education money. School boards, principals and teachers will have more say about which programmes they think will help their students.

***"We will give principals more power over discipline in the classroom, including the right to suspend and expel disruptive and dangerous students, as well as the authority to run their schools: and that inside the school gate, the principal's word is law.

"Principals will have the authority to hire and fire teachers."

And he said in conclusion, the UBP were not guardians of mediocrity.

But he said: "I am afraid, with the PLP, this is as good as it gets. It doesn't get any better."