The Progressive Labour Party came to power in 1998 with a major commitment to improving the quality of Bermuda education.

Not only was it of particular interest to Premier Jennifer Smith, who had been a respected Shadow Minister, but confidence in public schools had plummeted, in large part because of the restructuring of the school system under the United Bermuda Party.

Finally, quality education was the key to safeguarding Bermuda's future. With tourism in decline and international business burgeoning, and with the need for technical workers in all trades rising, the best way to ensure that young Bermudians could take advantage of the opportunities that the economy offered was by ensuring that they had a sound education, from pre-school to further education. That is as true today as it was five years ago.

It is worth remembering that the education reforms emanated from the belief - held perhaps more firmly by the PLP than by the UBP - that the old secondary school transfer exam condemned a majority of public school students, and particularly boys, to a substandard education while the "academic" schools, Warwick Academy and Berkeley, took the cream from the top.

As a result, the former Government introduced comprehensive education.

This is not the place to debate the merits of the changes. The basic system Bermuda now has must be made to work, because it cannot afford the trauma of another wholesale restructuring.

Slowly, in large part because of the efforts of the staff and parents, CedarBridge's reputation has improved and it is showing that it can produce quality graduates.

At the other end of the scale, the Premier's decision to reduce class sizes has given students more personal attention in primary schools. The results of this change will only become known now as the first students to benefit move towards the end of their primary education.

Education Minister Paula Cox has also shown a good deal of flexibility and has sensibly moved away at last from the sacred cow of mainstreaming special needs students and students with "behavioural difficulties" to setting up dedicated schools for students who have trouble functioning in mainstream schools.

Similarly, the decision to introduce GCSEs is the right one and will give graduating students an internationally recognised qualification instead of the nebulous Bermuda School Certificate. But it has taken far too long for the Government to get there.

Test results, however, have only improved slightly and male students still tend to lag behind females in terms of results. In the end, an education system will always be judged on its results and Bermuda's are still not good enough and that is reflected in the continuing lack of confidence in the system.

Teachers are still forced to spend too much time instilling order and not enough time teaching. An inflexible and cumbersome code of conduct makes enforcing discipline even harder.

That code was handed to the schools by the Ministry, and therein lies the major problem with education in Bermuda. The Education Ministry has too many civil servants spending too much time telling the people on the frontline how to do their jobs.

This is where the UBP's two major proposals have merit. The first is to introduce school boards for every school and to give principals more autonomy. The second is to hold schools accountable by publishing their performances on standardised tests. It will then become obvious which schools are getting it right and which are not.

The PLP opposes these ideas, instead wanting to set up boards to oversee larger numbers of schools and opposing the publication of individual school results.

Ms Cox has been one of the PLP's stars, first at Home Affairs and then in Education, better known as a Cabinet Ministers' graveyard. But if Ms Cox is the right person for perhaps any job in Cabinet, it is the UBP that has the right idea in transferring power from the Ministry to the schools.