classroom'' yesterday was a successful symbolic gesture to demonstrate the commitment of her Government to improving education standards.

Based on the number of ex-teachers who now fill the Government benches, education is at least one area where the Progressive Labour Party has the hands-on expertise to bring about improvements.

But improvement in education will come based on real achievement, not symbols.

Here the Government needs time. While Education Minister Milton Scott has made the right noises and some good decisions since taking on the portfolio, improvement in education standards will take months, if not years, to measure.

However, the public needs to know what standard education is at now.

Government has failed to release statistics showing how many students are at their age levels for literacy and numeracy. Nor have the Stanford test results ever been released.

Education officials may feel that it is unfair to burden the current generation of students with the perception that they are failing to achieve, and in the case of the Stanford tests, it was said that the students were unprepared when they sat the tests for the first time.

Nonetheless, if improvements are to be made in education, then Government must let the public know what the bottom line is. If students with better preparation make leaps in the next round of tests, then the public will take that into account.

No one questions Ms Smith's commitment to improve the Island's schools, but the public, as is the case with so many other Government matters, needs more than the assurance that she cares. It needs hard facts.

ADDED IMPETUS EDT Added impetus News that a major committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development opposes its campaign against offshore financial centres has given Bermuda's efforts to stay off a tax haven blacklist new impetus -- and a friend in an unlikely place.

The OECD's Business and Industry Advisory Committee rightly argues that offshore financial centres should not be punished because they have lower taxes and that the OECD needs to recognise that companies move to offshore domiciles to take advantage of the resident expertise, not purely for tax reasons.

This is the same argument that has been made by Bermuda and other offshore domiciles. But the BIAC goes further than many domiciles would probably have dared when it notes that it "is unwarranted taxation, rather than competition, that is stifling to economic and business developments''.

And it notes that it would make little sense for the OECD -- and the European Union, which also looks askance on "tax havens'' -- to make financially independent small countries dependent on the world's leading nations by smashing a vital part of their economies.

It is not known how much influence the committee has on the OECD's decision-makers. But it would make no sense for an organisation committed to economic development to destroy a part of the global financial world which actually helps to improve business efficiency.