school principals and teachers be paid off in an attempt to turn the education system around.

The Progressive Labour Party MP, who was principal of the former St. George's Secondary School for 12 years, said too many educators on the Island did not play an active role in the community and were tired and unable to motivate their pupils.

He said Government should pay them off and start afresh with a new staff that was prepared to change the way the public school system was run.

"Bermuda has too many burnt out principals and teachers,'' he said.

"They should be bought out and we should get in some people who are really prepared to change things.

"We need principals who are prepared to take on any parent who thinks there is nothing wrong with their child scoring 12 out of 20 in a spelling test.

Sometimes you have principals who won't go that extra mile, won't give pupils challenging work.

"If we got rid of those, in five years we would have weeded out the teachers, officers and principals that don't work properly and we will have a group that's functioning in the best interests of the children.'' Butler: Get rid of burnt out teachers Mr. Butler also said teachers and principals were not playing a big enough role in the community, with many remaining faceless and anonymous on an Island so small.

And he accused schools of working to different objectives, saying teachers needed more overseas training and a common goal to work toward.

But the PLP MP stressed he was speaking personally and as a former outspoken principal, not for Government.

He could not voice an opinion on comments made by the vice president of Bermuda College, Dr. Donald Peters, that the Education Ministry be closed down.

However, he did say: "The Island has to ask itself how it could have such a teeny education department 20 years ago, when we had double the amount of children, in comparison to now when we have half the children and a massive department.

"There is a lot of bureaucracy in the way.'' General secretary of Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) Michael Charles said last night that morale in the teaching profession was extremely low and a meeting was supposed to take place with the Ministry to discuss it. He said raising morale would help, but it wouldn't solve all the problems.

He added: "The problem is down to many years of neglect. This is not something that can be put right overnight.

"There are burnt out teachers out there, but people get burnt out in every profession.

"The problems we have now stem from years ago when the system was changed. We said then that it was a mistake and it was. They lowered the standards. We spoke about it then, but we were ignored. At least now we are being consulted more.

"And yes, the Ministry has grown and it is possibly a bit unwieldy. You have to look at the numbers it employs in comparison to the number of pupils and staff we have. We certainly do not get the return on what we pay to the Ministry.''