Abandoning the “push approach” to communicating information about education reform is a critical component of successfully moving the project forward, according to a proposal from the overseas consultant hired to guide the change.

In its statement of work to the Ministry of Education for a yearlong contract for 2025, Innovation Unit said “deep engagement with people” was required for a system-wide shift of the magnitude being undertaken in Bermuda.

The recommendation was listed under “Communications and Engagement”, one of 16 work streams that the proposal said was necessary to advance the project to the point of a locally sustainable public education system.

For each work stream, co-leads are required from within the system to facilitate the work and deliver objectives.

The cost for communications and engagement in the package almost doubled from the previous contract — which covered 11 months — from $70,000 to $132,000.

It came in addition to existing communication functions carried out by the Government’s Department of Communications.

The 2025 one-year contract proposal to the education ministry from Innovation Unit, which is based in Australia, New Zealand and Britain, will take the company’s work to December, with a price tag of $2.5 million.

Details were posted recently on the website of the ministry alongside an earlier $1.8 million contract that ran from November 2023 to September 2024.

The total amount paid to the company since the first contract awarded in 2020, which is not posted on the site, is $8,394,702.

The documents outline the deliverables of the unit, which was charged with collaborating on the redesign of the public education system along with the Education Reform Unit — tasked with assisting the company in a co-lead role.

Other work streams in the proposal recommended an overhaul of hiring practices and fewer regular work distractions for teaching staff seconded to the ERU for school and system reform.

The Communications and Engagement work stream called for “a functioning, skilled and suitably resourced team that can take up the communications and engagement functions within the Education Authority when stood up”.

The team has been charged with “refining the existing strategy to align to community needs” under an expanded working group with experience including PR, media relations and writing for government.

The statement of work added: “Despite good [and hard] work under way in schools, communication activities have largely focused on a push approach, and through online and social media.

“Change processes such as this require deep engagement with people.”

Becky Ausenda, the founder of the Bermuda Education Network, who has a master’s degree in education from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and has curriculum-building expertise, said widespread consultation would be welcome.

After the publication of the contracts, she told The Royal Gazette: “I think it would be prudent at this stage for local school leaders and those of us trying to support schools to be given an opportunity to comment on the next phase of reform.

“This could help to unify the various groups involved.”

Another recommendation was to redesign hiring practices for schools going through transition, with a view to moving the methods on to the Education Authority when it becomes operational.

HR expertise was listed as “highly desirable” among the conditions required for that work stream’s success and for the embedding of local capability.

Diallo Rabain, when he was the education minister, told The Royal Gazettelast October that a review of hiring was planned after recruitment delays that left some signature programmes at CedarBridge Academy without qualified teachers to deliver them.

In the “Future Workforce” work stream, Innovation Unit said in its proposal, which was dated December 2024: “People are at the heart of any transformation process.

“This is especially true in the case of education reform in Bermuda when the capability and capacity are insufficient to deliver on the reform agenda, and the processes and policies in play.

“For schools in transition, one of the most significant barriers is not having the ‘right’ people to deliver on the ambitious features that have been co-designed.”

Parts of the firm’s work statement spoke to the “required enabling conditions” for the education reform project.

Under the heading “Programme Rhythm”, they included:

• “No supplementary calls on people taking part in school and system transformation, which distract them from participation”

• “No further delays are experienced, which interrupt the work, noting that even small delays will throw the timeline out beyond what is possible to recover”

The company’s contract called for a more definitive line to be drawn between teachers’ roles in the classroom and as project managers working on education reform.

In the “System Leadership” work stream, the two-year goal to achieve local sustainability was listed as: “A cadre of people able to lead a system in transition with less support and appropriately prepared to apply for positions in the Education Authority when established.

“Changing the culture of the system to be one conducive to transformation focused initially on changing the nature of the relationship between schools and the system.”

Conditions to achieve the objective included: “Openness to co-designing solutions to challenges: the release of power.”

Another was: “Agreement to engagement of a cross-section of stakeholders within and beyond the BPSS [Bermuda public school system].”

Ms Ausenda said: “I think that the contents of the latest IU contracts raise a lot of questions.

“The school transformation process so far has been expensive and has not gone smoothly.

“Schools are struggling with numerous challenges and programmes are under-resourced.

“Bermuda Education Network is mainly involved in services at primary level, and we are aware that the performance metrics for numeracy and literacy established in 2020 were not yet achieved.

“In other words, we are not yet getting the basics right and some of us question why that is not the priority.

“I think a detailed plan that reveals the future direction for the Education Reform Unit, the Innovation Unit and Department of Education will therefore be welcomed.”

The Government was asked for comment.