Bermuda does not lack an education accountability system. We already have one.

Schools are required to have School Improvement Plans. The Department of Education is supposed to monitor school performance. The Commissioner of Education is responsible for addressing poor performance. And the Board of Education is supposed to provide another layer of oversight.

So before Parliament creates a new education authority, MPs should ask a very simple question:

Why didn't the existing accountability system work?

The Board of Education has statutory responsibilities for working with the commissioner to evaluate school performance, recommending how the education system's performance should be assessed, monitoring improvement plans and advising the minister on the evaluation of the commissioner. But it is not independent. Its members, chair and deputy chair are appointed by the minister.

There is also evidence that the monitoring system itself has been weakened. In March 2026, the Government told Parliament that the Educational Standards and Accountability unit had been under-resourced for three years because officers had been reassigned to support education reform.

Think about what that means.

If a school had a three-year School Improvement Plan with a target to improve literacy, and it repeatedly missed that target, what happened?

Who noticed? Who was responsible for acting? What support was provided? What changed?

And if nothing changed, who held the commissioner accountable?

These are not complicated questions. They are the basic questions any accountability system should be able to answer.

The danger is that Bermuda now abolishes the department, creates an education authority and simply transfers the same responsibilities into a new organisation without fixing the underlying problem.

There has been a catalogue of education failures over the past five years, while $8.4 million has been spent on consultants. According to the 2020-2023 Gates-MacGinitie reading assessments, more than 60 per cent of students completing public primary school are not meeting expectations. The 2024 and 2025 Gates-MacGinitie results have not been released.

Bermuda Education Network wants more education funding to be dedicated to creating the appropriate early interventions that students need for literacy and other areas of needs and we believe that real change is needed to how the system is managed and how leadership is distributed.

The education authority is an opportunity to address this but it must be independent and it must be fully resourced. Exactly how to do this cannot be rushed and real consultation with objective education professionals along with parents and other stakeholders is needed on how to get this right.

The Minister of Education and the Premier must answer for the Government's record. But Parliament now has responsibility for what comes next. If MPs pass an Education Authority Bill that fails to establish clear and effective accountability, responsibility will extend beyond the Government that designed it to the Parliament that approved it.

Think about the child who is not reading at grade level and whose future may be profoundly affected by whether the adults responsible for the education system act effectively when a school is failing.

This is Parliament's opportunity to make sure that next time something goes wrong, somebody is clearly responsible for putting it right.

Unless the legislation provides clear answers, we risk changing the structure without changing the accountability.

• Rebecca Ausenda is executive director of Bermuda Education Network, a literacy advocacy group whose mission is to support teaching and learning in public schools