Bermuda College president Dr. Charles Green raised the latest alarm bell over the Island's education system this week when he said that half of the College's first-year intake were unprepared for tertiary education and needed remedial education.

This is not new, and it should not be a great surprise that some students require help when the College has an open admissions policy and will accept any student who wishes to pursue further education.

But it is still not good enough, and it is worrying that successive College presidents have raised the same concern and say they have yet to see much improvement from the Island's secondary schools.

The College rightly offers remedial classes and is accelerating college preparation classes in an effort to put and end to the "five-year" graduation plan. In addition, it will be going in to the prisons to give inmates a chance to improve their education.

This is all to the good, given the need for Bermuda to raise educational standards among young adults, many of whom are otherwise disaffected and feel cut out of the Island's economic success.

But these measures are treating the symptoms of the disease. The cure lies in improving the schools.

Teachers and others will be the first to say that many of the problems are a result of indiscipline, poor family support and the like. Teachers who must be surrogate parents first cannot teach.

There's some truth in this, and it is undoubtedly a real problem. But waiting for dysfunctional families to repair themselves is not an answer to the problems confronting education. It is a reality and any attempts to improve education must go forward rather than wait for a solution that may never come.

One solution is to move beyond the current system of central control. Giving school principals more autonomy and holding them accountable for their success or failure is one answer. Successful schools should be allowed to expand, while failing schools will require new management and leadership.

Giving neighbourhoods and communities more involvement in how their schools are run is another answer through boards of governors or trustees who would receive a grant, appoint principals, fundraise and so on.

The current Ministry is bloated and focused on control rather than on recognising what works; cutting it down to the role of a regulator which sets a common curriculum, determines levels of achievement, certifies teachers and makes public the results of schools would go a long way both to freeing the schools and holding them accountable.

Transparency and accountability are the keys to success. The public is entitled to know which schools are succeeding and which are not.

Some people may fear that this will result in further flight from the schools. This need not be the case. Parents will want to enrol their children in public schools that work. Schools that do not will wish to learn from the successful peers or face extinction. In the long run, all schools will do better, and so will Bermuda.