Government spends the largest single chunk of its budget on education ¿ more than $150 million for this financial year alone.

Taxpayers' cash is used, quite rightly, to pay for everything from textbooks and teachers' salaries, to staff wages at the Ministry of Education and the running of Bermuda College.

But decisions about how money should be spent on education and on how a system acknowledged as being in crisis can be resurrected are taken behind closed doors.

The interim executive board set up in the wake of the damning Hopkins report on public schools and tasked with developing a three-year strategic plan for schools has operated in secrecy since it was appointed last summer, despite heavy criticism from Bermuda Union of Teachers.

Its chairman Philip Butterfield has rarely spoken out on the board's activities and has deflected questions about changes planned for schools. Last week The Royal Gazette asked Mr. Butterfield to release the minutes of all of the board's meetings since it was set up. He declined.

BUT general secretary Mike Charles said: "I feel that this whole thing should have been open to the public. Education belongs to the public. What is all this secrecy about?"

Before the interim board was set up, a board of education ¿ appointed by Education Minister Randy Horton every January to advise him on educational matters ¿ was in existence.

Its members were paid from the public purse but did not carry out their duties in the spotlight of public scrutiny. No wonder perhaps, when the Hopkins report detailed how they rarely met in 2006, had no clear role and were treated with "either indifference or disdain" by some senior Ministry of Education officers.

That body is about to be replaced by a new and improved board, the members of which are soon to be announced. A question to the Ministry last week about whether the new board would be transparent, hold meetings in public and release minutes did not get a reply.

No surprises there: the experts who carried out the study into the public school system which resulted in the Hopkins report found the Ministry was dysfunctional and operated through "diktat or stealth". A recommendation for less secrecy was made.

Over at Bermuda College, it's a similar story. The quango gets about $18 million a year and has another annually appointed board. Its last properly audited accounts date back almost five years.

Evelyn James Barnett, the college's director of communications, explained that board meetings are held once a month but are not open to the public. That means students, their parents and even college staff have no way of contributing to them because as the Hopkins report points out: "(The board's) current constitution has, remarkably no place for either faculty members or representatives of the student body."

Asked why the board holds its meetings in secret and does not release minutes, Ms James Barnett said: "It's standard practice."

But former college chairman Nalton Brangman said there was no reason why that should be the case. "I had no problem with any part of those meetings being made public because there was nothing in there to hide," he said.

"There was nothing there that "There was nothing there that needed to be put into the shadows of questionable darkness."

The Royal Gazette asked to attend a college board meeting at the end of 2006 ¿ after it was revealed that taxpayers' cash had been spent on private perks for then president Charles Green. There was no response.

Last week, we asked college chairman Larry Mussenden to open the next board meeting on January 29 to the public. He refused.