Education: Bermuda must do better ...
BERMUDA is suffering from an educational divide in which both black and white students are “doomed to a lifetime of substantially lower earnings”, according to the Opposition United Bermuda Party.And unless standards in the public school system improve, the gap will never be bridged, MP Grant Gibbons told the Mid-Ocean News.
The former UBP leader and Finance Minister declared that the school system is as segregated now as it was half a century ago - but that the barrier is now between classes rather than races.
Dr. Gibbons, made his comments after analysing statistics from the 2006 Job market Survey and the 2000 Census, which, he declared, demonstrated that those who attended a public school were immediately disadvantaged.
And he said that “a dysfunctional public education system” meant that many Bermudians were losing out to foreign workers when it came to carving up the spoils of the island’s economic success.
“Economic opportunity is key to achieving racial parity in Bermuda, and education is key to economic opportunity,” Dr. Gibbons said.
“That’s why we’re increasingly concerned about the deterioration of public education on our island and the development of a clear educational divide amongst Bermudians.
“Education should be a source of opportunity, not a mark of privilege. People who can’t afford to send their children to private schools deserve the same opportunities as those who can. But today, that birthright for Bermudian children in the public school system is in jeopardy.
“Our schools may have been desegregated in the 1960s, but in 2007 they remain essentially segregated. Today’s de facto segregation isn’t based strictly on race, but on class. Two school systems were wrong in 1965, and they are wrong today.”
Referring to the 2000 Census, Dr. Gibbons pointed out that figures show income is directly linked to qualifications. He said that, with graduation rates hovering around the 50 per cent mark, many young Bermudians found their career paths and earning potential curtailed the moment they left the classroom.
It was therefore not surprising that public school students - the majority of whom leave school with fewer qualifications than their privately educated peers - found themselves at the lower end of pay scales throughout their working lives, he said.
“There is an educational divide in Bermuda that’s very real and it’s confirmed by data from the 2000 Census,” he said.
“Recent education statistics show that almost 50 percent of our public secondary school students don’t graduate in their senior year, and in 2003, the failure rate reached as high as 74 percent.
“Terra Nova exam results show that Bermuda’s middle and senior school students have scored consistently below the US average on language, reading and math over the last seven years - and these poor results were understated, because in some years up to 25 percent of underperforming students were not tested. There has even been a steady deterioration of score results in our primary schools.
“A dysfunctional public education system has a powerfully negative impact on our social cohesiveness, our competitiveness as a country and our ability to supply educated Bermudians to power our economy. It widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
“The negative impact is felt in a very personal and disturbing way by young Bermudians who apply for jobs and get turned down for lack of basic skills. They see good jobs in our main service industries go to foreign workers and wonder why. They feel alienated from their community, and they don’t understand it. They have every right to ask those questions, and a large part of the answer is that Bermuda’s education system failed them.
“Data from the 2000 Census clearly shows that income is directly correlated to education - the higher the educational level attained, the higher the annual income. For example, the Census shows that someone without a secondary school certificate can expect to earn only half the income of someone with a bachelor’s degree (See Fig 1)>
“This means that the 50 percent of our children who aren’t graduating from our public secondary schools are doomed to a lifetime of substantially lower earnings - unless they are caught by other training programmes.
“This situation disproportionately affects black Bermudians, given the racial composition of our population and public school system. They will end up as discouraging statistics in CURE reports unless real reform takes place within the public-education system.”
Dr. Gibbons highlighted a recent report by Northeastern University which discovered that the demand for a college-educated workforce was increasing as international business on the island expanded.
The report concluded: “The changing industrial and occupations structure of labour demand in Bermuda over the past four years has altered the nature of access for employment for Bermudians. Strong growth for workers in the college labour market coupled with declines in clerical, low-end sales and service jobs has meant that demand for workers with higher levels of educational attainment has risen rapidly, while the demand for workers with fewer years of schooling has declined. We observed large gaps in the level of educational attainment between the Bermudian and non-Bermudian working-age populations. Lower levels of educational attainment among Bermudians diminish their employment prospects in an economy that is demanding workers with higher levels of educational attainment.”
Dr. Gibbons said the trend meant that more overseas workers were being shipped in to hold down jobs that Bermudians could do - if they had better training. He pointed out that, according to 2005 statistics, more than 80 per cent of the 842 chefs on the island were foreigners. The statistics also show that 67 per cent of qualified accountants are non-Bermudian, as are almost half of the island’s computer programers and legal executives.
“The result is clear - an increasing number of non-Bermudians- now over 30 percent of the workforce - need to be hired to fill jobs that Bermudians, if properly trained, should hold,” Dr. Gibbons said. “The existing educational divide both between Bermudians and non-Bermudians and between black Bermudians and white Bermudians is clearly demonstrated by Census 2000 data, which shows the percentage of college-degree holders in the different population groups (See Fig.2). The higher proportion of non-Bermudians holding college degrees is not surprising, as employers selectively recruit them overseas for their technical or professional capabilities.
“There is some good news. Younger Bermudians are making progress. The Census data shows a higher proportion of both black and white Bermudians with college degrees amongst the 25-to 35-year-old age grouI>(See Fig 3).<$>
“In addition, the number of 25- to 35-year-old Bermudians (male and female) holding college degrees increased in the nine years between the 1991 Census and the 2000 Census (See Figs 4 and 5).
“Despite these gains, there is a sharp and unacceptable educational divide between Bermudian men and women and between black and white Bermudians. There is still a dramatic need for improvement.
“Unless the recent poor results in public secondary schools are turned around, it is likely that this educational divide will increase, as fewer of these young Bermudians will be able to pursue college programmes, and it will be young black Bermudians for the most part who will be at an increasing disadvantage unless the public-school system is reformed.
“Deteriorating results in the public-education system, a job market that increasingly requires college-level training and an already existing educational divide-it all points to a perfect storm, a storm that will deny our children the opportunities they deserve and will wreck havoc on Bermuda’s future.”
