A few years ago, I asked publicly: where does reform end, and where does real change begin for us?

It was a question in reflection, observing the education policy cycle endlessly branded as progress while outcomes remained unstable.

After the latest education news, it’s clear this is no longer an abstract policy debate. What we are witnessing now is a pattern of governance failure that has landed directly on families, educators and school communities — including my own.

Over several years, millions of taxpayer dollars — your money — have been spent on so-called education reform. Significant public funds have gone towards overseas consultants and international engagements in the name of “leadership”, “partnerships” and reform frameworks promoted as “best practice”.

What do families have to show for it?

Not educational empowerment.

Not stability.

Not clarity.

And definitely no accountability.

Only a reshuffling of the cabinet deck.

More money spent, disruption, confusion and a system that keeps changing its language to avoid admitting failure.

The PLP leadership has repeatedly insulated itself from accountability by pushing risk downstream — on to educators, parents and ultimately children — while retaining control over narrative and decision-making. When reforms fail, the consequences are not carried by those who designed them or those consultants, but by communities forced to absorb the fallout. That cost — emotional, educational, financial and social — is among the most expensive burdens a society can bear, particularly during a cost-of-living crisis.

We have seen this pattern before.

We saw this with the West End Warriors.

We saw it with the voices raised in St George’s, Gilbert, Purvis and more communities forced to respond only after decisions had already been made

We see it again now, as revised guidelines are quietly rolled out long after public resistance made clear the original plans were not working. Instead of accountability, families are blamed for “hesitating to embrace change”, ignoring the reality that much of Bermuda’s social strain stems from repeated failures to design, implement and sustain policy responsibly across successive administrations.

The rebranding of middle schools under the banner of “reform” is laughable at best — and insulting at worst. It reflects a belief that the public will not organise, will not remember, and will not hold leadership to account beyond the weekly news cycle.

Failure is obscured with charity announcements, grants, symbolic gestures, renamings, and spectacle — bread-and-circus tactics meant to placate rather than solve — while real structural problems remain untouched.

At this point, this is no longer reform.

It is a humiliation ritual in the public sphere — failure denied, repackaged and redistributed back to the very people expected to carry it.

The public are spoken to as if we are foolish. Families are expected to shoulder the emotional and educational burden of inconsistency. Educators are left to hold together broken systems with diminishing support. Transparency is treated as optional.

This is an ecosystem failure that feeds many of Bermuda’s interconnected crises.

Agency is eroded, prevention disappears, and the consequences of poor decision-making — trauma, disengagement, antisocial behaviour — become conditions to be managed rather than harms to be prevented.

This is not on teachers, nor on parents, nor on students — who wake each day to passionately follow their dreams, greet their friends and live within the moral frameworks we, as elders, are responsible for modelling.

And we must continue to lead them with accountability — to practise what we preach. If not, what are we doing as a community besides wasting away our collective responsibility?

This falls on leadership, and the shock of these failures must be redirected and absorbed by them.

And if we do not name it plainly, call it what it is, the community will be asked to carry these failures again.

It is time to stand up, organise and demand accountability.

• Déjon Simmons is a concerned citizen and parent of a child at Francis Patton Primary School. This article first appeared on his Substack account,Onion Soup