School principal Mr Melvyn Bassett was right to point out the potential for social conflict arising from the re-segregation of Bermuda's schools in his recent speech to the Rotary Club. What is also needed is an understanding of why so many parents decide to boycott Government schools in favour of private schools.

I often ask parents of young children why they do not utilise government schools, who after all spend almost $570,000 per day on schooling (see the 2004/5 budget for the figures) and for which they pay taxes, rather than send them off to Saltus or Mount St. Agnes. I then receive a look which says in effect "who is this nerd ? and on what planet does he live"?

Parents send their children to private school, and effectively pay twice for that privilege, because they have lost confidence in the ability of Government schools to educate their children to a high standard, a standard necessary to be successful in the modern world. If public schools provided a first class education, then affluent parents would be fighting to enrol their children ? not enrolling them at birth at private schools.

Why do so many (though not all) public schools fail to educate?

Public schools are failures because they suffer from the same underlying structural flaws that make all socialist programmes eventually fail:

1. Protection from competition; and

2. Insulation from failure

Let me elaborate further.

If a public school fails to educate its charges to a sufficiently high degree, parents with insufficient funds ? a majority ? are not able to do much about it. They cannot afford to send their children to private school, and the Education Department is impervious to criticism or reform and for a number of years has tolerated sub-standard results. Government schools are, in effect, protected from competition.

But competition is important because it compels each school continually to improve their skills, their efficiency and the desirability of their product or service. They do not have to bother to compete because they have a captive audience, mainly but not exclusively composed of poor black parents.

They are also insulated from failure because Government through taxation on us all simply supplies the money to function each and every year after the budget is approved. Private schools have to compete for financial support because tuition fees and donations cannot be taken for granted. The funding of Government schools does not come directly from satisfied parents but from taxation which can be taken for granted because you go to jail if you fail to pay.

Indeed, the worse the performance of public schools, the more likely is the case that government will increase the school budget to deal with the educational crisis created by the administrators. Budget figures prove this point as spending on public education has more than doubled between 1995/96 and 2004/05 as standards declined.

Parents should understand that public school teachers are Government employees and therefore must do what they are told, not what is best for the children in their care or be accountable to parents. If teachers disagree it is too bad. The vast majority of teachers are conscientious professionals who wish to achieve success for their charges. Political influence exercised by the Department of Education frequently makes it impossible for them to teach effectively. They are in an impossible situation. Schools are at the whim of whatever the current Government thinks is fashionable. If teachers disagree, it is too bad. They have to remember that their job is not to educate children or to respond to parents but to make the administration and the government look good. What makes the government look good? It is not highly educated children or the wishes of parents but such critical things as having the Minister's picture in or announcing some new fancy fashionable programme that is likely to be abandoned in a few years time.

If readers think I am exaggerating, cast your mind back to the fiasco at St George's Prep about six months ago. Here a successful Government school was penalised and the appeals of parents were initially ignored because it did not meet the quota of black students determined by the Minister. Or two years ago, when home school parents were being harassed by Government officials. More recently a maths lecturer at the Bermuda College with 29 years experience was dismissed for making an inappropriate remark in the hearing of another member of staff who subsequently lied about his qualifications. His fraud was not discovered until 12 months later ? at which time he was employed at the Department of Education and only because a persistent newspaper reporter took up the case. In addition, there is the hypocrisy of politicians, Government teachers, and civil servants who tell poor parents that all is wonderful, then send their own children off to private schools to receive a sound education.

Education is far too important a responsibility to leave in the hands of a Government bureaucracy whose monopoly status allows it to be insensitive and unaccountable to parents and students. Socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried and there is a boatload of evidence to conclude that it does not work in education. Public education is simply a bad investment in Bermuda's human capital as well as being a human tragedy.

Non-affluent parents have to accept the mediocrity of the current system because they do not have the money to escape. Such parents would be outraged if they could only buy one make of car, or they had to buy Government-produced bread. Yet year after year, they are forced to accept a third-rate Government system that ultimately condemns their children to the lower reaches of society. Everyone in Bermuda should be concerned that so many children do not have access to a first-class education.

I hope Mr. Bassett will take up that cause when he next speaks to Rotary.

The problems of non-performing public schools is not confined to Bermuda. If the views expressed by John Gatto in "A Different Kind of Teacher" about schools in New York are accurate, the problems there are significantly more severe (widespread violence for example) than here. The same can be said about the UK.

The problem is essentially a non-accountable political elite and stemming from that, a bureaucracy that systematically ignores parents, on the assumption that they are incapable of bringing up their children. When parents are ignored or patronised they simply opt out and go private ? if they can afford to do so. The rich and influential will always be able to cope; the poor are left to flounder. That is the injustice of the current system.