Faced with a $20,000 list of "needs'', a Government primary school has turned to students and parents to help it raise the money through catalogue shopping sales.

Purvis Primary is one of a growing number of public schools launching major fund raisers to buy things Government says it cannot afford.

Warwick Secondary has been raising money in a number of ways, including traditional bake sales, to restock a library it calls a "national disgrace''.

"We only have about 50 books we can actually use,'' PTA head Mrs. Patty Ann Flood said this week.

"We don't even have a complete encyclopaedia set. And some books were so old they just fell apart.'' Purvis PTA head Mr. George Simons was off the Island but it is understood the school is raising funds for "educational supplies and equipment for various areas'' including the library.

A letter sent out last week to parents of Purvis students from the fund raising coordinator Mrs. Kamula Simmons, said: "Welcome back to Purvis Primary! This year we are implementing a new fund-raising programme that will enable us to meet certain needs for our school.'' The scheme involves the selling of merchandise from three catalogues issued to students plus prizes for the class which sells the most goods.

"We are inviting you to join us as we pull our marketing skills together in order to raise some money for Purvis and earn prizes for the students and classes,'' Mrs. Simmons said.

A National PTA source claimed that most of the Government school libraries were in "terrible condition''. School library books were in a poor state and there was a lack of "actual educational material'' on the shelves, she said.

She warned matters involving the public schools were quickly coming to a head.

"Teachers used to just have a wish list which PTAs raised money for but now they have a list of wants and needs,'' she said.

Promises of educational reforms, middle schools and a new senior secondary in the future were of no comfort to parents right now, she said.

Schools were being forced to "pay for more and more stuff'', she said.

Education Minister the Hon. Clarence Terceira, who returned yesterday from a month-long trip abroad, reserved comment on the situation until after his next scheduled meeting with the National PTA.

But he said a tour of British middle schools and mega-high schools in England and Canada had convinced him the restructuring was worth waiting for. "It really convinced me we are doing the right thing,'' he said.

During his own vacation time, Dr. Terceira over the last month visited middle schools and a 1,260-student high school in Northumberland which he found "extremely well-organised''. He also visited a 3,200-student high school in New Brunswick.

"It's all to do with the organisation of the school, not the size,'' he concluded.

The National PTA source said the next meeting will be held on Tuesday during which elections would be held.

Thereafter, firm steps would be taken to get action on the schools' list of complaints, she warned, agreeing that things were coming to a head. "We still have no answer on the Warren Jones (former acting principal of Northlands Secondary) case,'' she noted. Another serious concern was the fact the Department of Education was being run from 13 different locations and the continued hiring of high-salaried "experts'', she said.

"They keep hiring and nothing is improving on our end,'' she said.

Membership of the National PTA now includes almost every school in Bermuda.

Last month at the start of the new school year, Elliott Primary PTA officials resorted to calling a news conference to show the public the "hazardous'' state the plant was in. And immediately afterwards came complaints from West End School PTA mainly concerning the library which was in a state of disrepair.