Continued from Saturday's newspaper The Opposition believed there should be a moratorium on granting of status but that residency certificates could be granted to certain long-term residents, Mr. Alex Scott said.

The total numbers probably were 300 to 500 and "we're not talking about a wholesale opening of our doors to large numbers that will displace Bermudians,'' Mr. Scott said.

Noting that a recent labour relations conference was well attended by labour but not by management, Mr. Scott said management could not be allowed to display a "cavalier attitude'' toward creating workplace harmony.

The Minister "has to take on management, take on labour, take on anyone...who is not prepared to do their part.'' Mr. Scott said that too many job advertisements appeared intended not to attract Bermudians, but to dissuade them. "The real applicant is already on staff and probably wrote the ad,'' he said.

Mr. Scott then raised the case of a status Bermudian who lived in the United Kingdom but had been unable to return there since visiting Bermuda for a family emergency.

The man had a wife and a son back in Britain but had been told he had no right of appeal, Mr. Scott said.

"He will get back to Great Britain if we on this side have anything to say about it.'' In his first speech since stepping down as Premier in August, Sir John Swan made an appeal for unity in Bermuda.

He said: "Until we stop being a divided society, torn apart with ideas which are irrelevant to ideas of the individual working Bermudian, then we won't start to make the Bermuda we want.'' Sir John added that there was a need to continually develop the Island to meet the expectations of residents and visitors.

But he said: "The construction industry is dead, by and large. The only company which is still successful is non-unionised. I don't know what that means.'' And he added that only by providing jobs would social problems like drugs and domestic violence be eradicated.

Sir John said, however, that financial problems were affecting both black and white Bermudians.

He said: "I know for a fact that the white community is not doing so well. I know for a fact that some enjoy a substantial income, but many are suffering quietly.'' Sir John added: "These are people with businesses to run. They don't want other people to know they are in difficulty, but you may happen to know they are.'' He added that occupancies in the hotel industry were down as were standards.

And he urged union chiefs to tell their members in hotels that managers had to be able to manage and to ram home the message that money earned from visitors was a vital part of the Bermudian economy.

"If it isn't, the Country will suffer and the people who are employed will be out of work,'' he warned.

And he said the lack of top-class entertainment in the Island's hotels was also a problem. He added he accepted that hotels were struggling financially and could not afford to lay on entertainment -- but said he had seen visitors sitting around hotels "like zombies, trying to work out what they are going to do.'' Sir John also said that it could be time to "open up'' the Bermudian financial sector.

He asked: "Should Bermuda stay a closed shop with just three banks?'' The PLP's Mr. Ottiwell Simmons said he was "most impressed'' that Nelson Mandela had asked Miss Bermuda Islands, currently in South Africa for the Miss World contest, to give his regards to Sir John.

Mr. Simmons added: "He has an awfully good reputation abroad, but when you come home, you find he ruled over a shattered economy.'' He said that much of Sir John's speech appeared to be a repudiation of UBP rule and that the former Premier appeared to be pushing for casinos.

Mr. Simmons added: "The Honourable Member was not quite on the money, but I would like to commend him for having the courage to make that type of speech, even though he bungled in a few areas.'' He said that Bermuda had "lost its passion for tourism'' and recalled when top acts had regularly played the Island's hotels.

But he said that there were never any casinos, and the only gambling on horse racing.

Mr. Simmons went on to say that international business was a "business without smoke stacks'' and "user-friendly.'' He said that educational establishments had re-vamped their training for these companies.

But he said: "The money that went into the Stonington campus did not come from international business and it did not come from the tourist industry -- it came from the ordinary working class people.'' He added that much of the problem with tourism was that visitors were being "ripped off'' by extra charges from hotels.

He said: "We have got to inquire and be bold and courageous -- go to the problem and fix it. We can't care who gets hurt.'' He added that Tourism Minister Mr. David Dodwell had a conflict of interest and that "should never be -- it could never happen in Canada, the USA or Britain.'' Mr. Simmons also said that the UBP was split now split into four factions supporting Mrs. Grace Bell, Mr. Jim Woolridge, Mr. Trevor Moniz and Dr. David Saul.

He added: "Let's fix a date for an election and let's get this Country working. Bermuda is not -- and don't let anyone kid you -- a poor Third World country. Bermuda is one of the richest countries in the world, but 90 percent of the money is in some hands and the rest are scrabbling for the other 10 percent.'' Education Minister Jerome Dill told the House that America was currently torn between a Republican manifesto of massive cuts in education and a Democratic plan to spend more on schooling.

He said: "I am not here to pass judgement on the dealings in another jurisdiction, but the current impasse is all about the future of the US and its people. In my respectful view, this Throne Speech and the opposition's reply to it is about the future of the people of Bermuda.'' He admitted there were problems with attitude, discipline, drugs and attacks on teachers in the school system.

He added he had approached members of the Opposition to get their views on education and looked forward to constructive suggestions.

Mr. Dill said he had read an article in The Royal Gazette where a teacher at Warwick Secondary -- who asked not to be named -- had said the public education system was falling apart and that "a lot goes on the public never hears about.'' Mr. Dill said that a lot did go on the public never heard about -- and quoted a letter from another teacher at the school who pointed out that more than 40 of the school's students were involved with the Police Cadet and Army programmes.

He added the school had a thriving Student Council, and many other students were involved in activities which reflected well on themselves and the school.

The letter from the pro-Warwick teacher said: "We live in a society which, when a child misbehaves, it's splashed all over The Royal Gazette and it's all over the TV news.

"But when a child demonstrates that young person is a person of discipline and ambition, you don't hear about it.'' Mr. Dill added: "The Throne Speech reaffirms Government's commitment to the mission of education...that mission is to guarantee equal opportunity for education for all Bermuda's students.

"And there is a difference when we talk about equal opportunity -- there is a dramatic difference between excellence and elitism.

"The Government's mission is no less than to provide every single student in the public education sphere access to education which is as good as the very best in the private school system.

"It stands to reason if we live up to our vision, we can achieve that. If we do, we will have done a great service to the people of this Country.'' Mr. Dill then raised the possibility that Government would change its reform plan and introduce a third senior secondary school, up from the present plan of two.

Government said in the Throne Speech that it was concerned about public reaction to the proposed enrolment at the new senior secondary school at Prospect, projected to reach a maximum of 1,200 by 2002.

By then, enrolment at Berkeley Institute, the other senior secondary school, was projected to be 600, Mr. Dill said.

"Our review has focused on lowering the number (of students) at Prospect,'' Mr. Dill said.

The only options were to increase the number of students at Berkeley or have more than two senior secondary schools, he said. While the current plan called for two senior schools, "the new plan may call for more than two.'' "There is a lot more to follow in the very, very near future on what the Government has decided to do,'' Mr. Dill said. "I will move on.'' Too often Bermudians accentuated the negative about young people and the school system, when they should be "glorifying and quite frankly exalting'' the positive aspects, he said.

Mr. Dill then gave a detailed account of curriculum development for the reformed school system, noting that the new curriculum would be very heavily weighted toward core subjects like English, Math, Science, and Social Science.

English would be literature-based to assure children were literate. African, Caribbean, European, World, and Bermudian history would be taught in a "multicultural curriculum,'' he said.

And to underline the importance of business and technology education, an education officer would be recruited specifically to handle business education. Business would even be taught at the middle school level, though that was "most uncommon'' in other countries.

Each school at the senior level would provide technology teaching, but the main site for that would be Prospect.

A Code of Conduct would be ready for implementation by the end of the school year, after consultation with teachers, principals, and education officers.

Some mistakenly believed that corporal punishment had been banned in Bermuda's school system, Mr. Dill said. It was still there "as a last resort,'' and with "very, very strict controls'' on who could administer it.

Due to lack of sleep or breakfast, "there is no question that there are a number of students who present themselves at school on a daily basis when they are quite frankly unfit to learn,'' Mr. Dill said.

A "wellness programme'' jointly handled by the Ministries of Health and Education would address that.

Turning to the "business/education partnership,'' Mr. Dill said 104 organisations had been invited to take part in a work shadowing programme for students, and so far, 77 businesses had accepted.

Mr. Dill then turned to the other part of his portfolio, Human Affairs, which he described as "a natural partner to the Education Department.'' Criminal Code amendments aimed at making racial acts crimes were "groundbreaking in Bermuda,'' Mr. Dill said.

Turning to the new Commission for Unity and Racial Equality, Mr. Dill noted that CURE had issued a news release on Friday expressing support for chairman Mr. Michael Mello, after a frank discussion of his comment at a news conference that racism was "not a major problem'' in Bermuda.

One of CURE's first tasks would be to produce a Code of Conduct on the basis of race, which would be tabled in Parliament.

Shadow Education Minister Jennifer Smith said Mr. Dill should perhaps consider taking control of the Ministry of Education out of Government's hands altogether, and turning it over to a bipartisan group.

As for his recent request for input from her on the new Education Act, "I don't think that we on this side could possibly add anything to the many thousands of words that were written in that wonderful and now forgotten document -- the Education Planning Team report that was placed on the floor of this House'' and debated in 1990.

She would gladly give Government a precis of the report's recommendations, "in case the copy that belongs over on the other side has gone missing.'' The EPT was set up in 1987 and Government said in 1990 it accepted the EPT's recommendations.

But they included a detailed disciplinary code, which the Country was still waiting for, Ms Smith said.

The Education Ministry was failing to carry out its responsibility under the Education Act to educate children to age 16 or 17, she said. Some students were being expelled at age 14 or 15 and had nowhere else to go.

Ms Smith congratulated Mr. Dill for introducing a "Plan B,'' or the possibility of more than two senior secondary schools. She noted that the Progressive Labour Party's policy statement on education in 1990 had called for three senior schools, and that came from the EPT report.

Ms Smith said there was a connection between students who fell through the cracks and those who later ended up in prison.

Teachers were trained to teach, and as much as they tried to upgrade themselves, could not counsel traumatised children, she said. "We need to have school-based professional services to assist the teachers with their jobs.'' Ms Smith noted there had been a number of "flip flops'' from Government on education.

The previous Education Minister said the new Education Act would not permit corporal punishment, she said.

"Is the current Minister saying that the new Education Act will include a provision for corporal punishment?'' Teachers had written her, concerned about their personal safety.

The time had come for Government to consider the security of both school boundaries and teachers themselves. Many teachers were women who had no way of calling for help if attacked while alone in part of a school.

Ms Smith noted that Mr. Dill said the reformed system would have "high standards.'' But she took no comfort from that. "He did not say what the standards would be, or how he would assure they are maintained or kept.'' And while she appreciated talk of Bermudianising the curriculum, she warned Mr. Dill "not to get too insular.'' Bermudian students "compete globally for jobs in their own country and they compete globally for university places.'' Ms Smith said she was ashamed of the state of the school system. "Young people's lives are being ruined, while we sit around and play games and talk about what we're going to do,'' she said. Had Government moved more quickly, "we would have saved many lives.'' Youth and Sport Minister Pamela Gordon then moved that the Throne Speech Debate adjourn until next Friday.