ISA Trott has a simple response to anyone who blames incompetent teachers for yet another bumper crop of students leaving the public education system without a graduation certificate.

"If teachers worked in an environment where they had total control over what comes into their classroom then certainly we could hold them solely responsible for what comes out," she says.

"The fact is that there are many outside entities which influence a child's ability to learn."

It is these other factors ? the social circumstances part of the equation ? which Mrs. Trott believes are at the heart of what she refers to as "a national crisis".

"The social circumstances a child is living in has a great impact on their ability to grasp information in the classroom," she said.

"We have students living in overcrowded and in some cases unsafe living situations. We have students coming to school having had no breakfast and having no lunch. How can we expect these children to learn when their basic human needs ? food and shelter ? are not being met?"

But surely, in the third richest country in the world, it would be misleading to suggest that more than half our public education students are turning up at school malnourished having spent a sleepless night in some war-torn ghetto?

While Mrs. Trott agreed, she believes that parents still have a far greater role to play in their child's development than some might realise, and without that support, teachers are fighting a losing battle.

"Certainly we could use more parental support for the enforcement of school rules," she said.

"I am amazed at the number of teachers who have been accused by parents for what seems like reasonably simple disciplinary measures. I can accept that in today's economy many parents are working several jobs in order to make ends meet and they do not have the time in the evening to oversee homework. What I cannot accept is when the first time the school sees a parent's face is because a teacher confiscated their child's $500 cell phone and they want to give her a piece of their mind.

"Respect for rules and authority is part of the discipline schools are charged with teaching students. Parents can be helpful if they are supportive of the school rules ? even when they don't agree with them ? and teach their children to respect the authority of the teacher."

According to Mrs. Trott, the role of the parent is one lesson that many adults fail to learn. But she also acknowledges that the education system itself is failing to teach that lesson.

And it needs to be learnt in early parenthood. Teachers believe that pre-school attendance must be made mandatory so that all infants entering the school system are equipped with some rudimentary learning skills. Currently, Mrs. Trott argues, any batch of five-year-olds entering the base level of the school system on Day One are already sub-divided across a broad range of tiers in terms of ability, experience and enthusiasm.

"Primary One teachers are expecting to start teaching their curriculum based on the knowledge and skills the students will have already learned in pre-school," Mrs. Trott said.

"If a child has not attended pre-school, they start at a disadvantage to everyone else in the class. This means that, instead of getting on with teaching what a teacher has been mandated to teach, this teacher has to go back and teach things the child should have learned in pre-school."

And unfortunately that pattern can continue through a child's academic career. Teachers believe that the recently introduced "social promotion" scheme - where students automatically progress to the next year regardless of their grades ? only encourages failing students to keep on failing. Furthermore, those problem a P1 teacher faces ? trying to teach a class of students who demonstrate a wide range of abilities and interest ? are only intensified. The gap between successful student and poor student only widens with time.

"The removal of social promotion, along with the need for clearly defined standards of achievement go hand in hand," Mrs. Trott said.

"Each year of school should have a list of skills a child needs to have mastered in order for them to be able to move to the next level. If the child cannot demonstrate mastery of these skills they should not be promoted to the next level. Presently, we promote students to the next level regardless of their ability to master the curriculum. This social promotion of students throughout primary and middle school is detrimental to the students when they reach the senior school because all of a sudden a student who was passed from one class to the next whether they knew the material or not, is now required to prove competency in one level of a subject before he can proceed to the next level.

"We believe that the removal of social promotion will have the added effect of increasing student motivation as well as increasing parental involvement. If a student knows that they must demonstrate mastery in order to move forward, they are more likely to study to avoid the humiliation of repeating the year. Likewise, with younger students, parents will work with their children to ensure mastery if there is the threat of retention."

he Bermuda Union of Teachers has repeatedly outlined a series of proposals which it believes can bring about improvements in results. Mandatory pre-school attendance and the abolition of social promotion, they argue, will help level the playing field in the long term. In the short term, smaller classroom sizes and an increase in support staff are the correct answer.

"Smaller classroom size is especially important when you are dealing with students with various academic capabilities," Mrs. Trott said.

"It is not unusual for a Middle School Year 2 teacher to have students in the class who are academically on the level of a Primary 4 or 5 student, combined with other students who are academically at the Middle School Year 3 level. The challenge is to teach the class in such a way that the lower level children can understand, while attempting to keep the higher level students from being bored. In this instance one can see that the smaller the class, the better it will be for both students and teachers.

"On the other hand, when students are grouped according to their level of academic functioning, class size becomes less important. When a teacher has a class which is grouped with students of equal capability, the ability to plan and deliver lessons is that much easier.

here are not enough support services in the schools to assist with the number of children who have large gaps in their knowledge, says Mrs.Trott. Therefore these students are placed in regular classes where the teacher has to do his or her best to teach to the regular students, the high flying students, the students with behavioural problems and the students with learning difficulties all at the same time.

"Teachers are constantly complaining that there are not enough learning support teachers to service all the children who need extra help. As a result of this teachers say that only those children who are the most severe get the services and that this leaves a large number of children who could benefit from extra help not receiving it. This has been compounded by the fact the Ministry of Education has an 'inclusion' policy which means that students who traditionally would have been taught by teachers who were trained in delivering Special Education are now being taught by teachers who have no such training. It takes a special person to commit to teach Special Education and to place those students who require Special Education with a teacher who is not trained to deliver it is a disservice to both the students and the teacher."learly the Ministry of Education, with its hold on the purse strings, has the final say on the number of teachers and support staff it is prepared to hire. It is also responsible for any number of decisions that affect the day-to-day practicalities of teaching. But according to Mrs. Trott, the current administration has not learnt the lessons of its predecessors, who failed for a simple reason ? they didn't listen to the experts.

"Why this Government and the last have chosen to ignore the recommendations of the soldiers on the ground ? the teachers ? is a mystery to me," she said.

"Teachers have always been very vocal regarding the changes which are needed in order to improve the system however, consistently their contributions are devalued."

Instead of listening, new, untried teaching initiatives are enforced without the backing of teachers, only to be dropped when they fail to deliver instant results.

"A prime example of this is when the Ministry of Education implemented the Writing to Read Programme in primary schools several years ago," Mrs. Trott said.

"The idea was that you teach students to write by letting them ignore the rules of grammar and spelling, with the emphasis on them getting their ideas on paper. It was believed that if we could just get the children writing and interested in reading, we could teach the spelling and grammar rules later. Well 'later' never came because the programme was replaced before the children who were taught by that method had the opportunity to learn the rules of spelling and grammar. Those students then came to Middle School still writing words according to the way they sounded.

"I had an M3 student who wrote that she wanted to become a beautician when she grew up - spelling it 'butishon'. The teachers who teach at the senior level are appalled when they get these students who don't have a clue about the rules of grammar and they are unable to spell. What this means is that instead of being able to teach their curriculum, they have to go back and teach basic grammar."

According to Mrs. Trott, Government could also ease the plight of teachers if school supplies were more readily available.

While the Ministry of Education swallows up the second largest portion of Bermuda's national budget, many teachers argue that that money could be used more effectively.

"An interesting exercise would be to determine how much of the budget for the Department of Education is spent on the salaries of the Education Officers and other Officials in the Ministry," Mrs. Trott said.

"The Bermuda Union of Teachers has maintained for some time that the Ministry of Education is top heavy with little or no correlation between the work of the Education Officers and student achievement. We have education officials being paid more than $100,000.00 per year, yet I have P1 teachers saying they have trouble getting necessities like pencils, crayons and scissors for their students. I think we need to look more closely at the education budget and redirect funds to those areas which have been proven to have a direct impact on student achievement."

rs. Trott believes that, while some teachers have become increasingly despondent and many are now quitting education, the vast majority of staff remain "dedicated to improving the lives of young people".

"The numbers revealed last week should outrage every man, woman and child in this island," she said.

"None of us are immune from the devastating effect of such poor results from our public education system. Every sector of our working community, our social systems as well as our ability to remain the third richest country in the world is threatened by those dismal numbers. We cannot sustain our current level of living let alone advance as a society when we are graduating less than 50 per cent of our students from our public schools.

"It is no secret that teachers are experiencing a high level of frustration. They are trying to perform their jobs to the best of their abilities and they feel like they have very little support from the Ministry, from some parents, from the community and even from the very students they are trying to teach."

So can the results be turned around? Mrs. Trott believes her members are capable of doing so, but they cannot bring about change single-handed. And while a Government review is a first step, it needs to be acted upon.

"Certainly the results can be improved, the question is how serious is the Ministry of Education about improving the results," she said.

"Are they really willing to endure a critical analysis of the way things are and how they got this way? Are they willing to admit that some major mistakes have been made? And finally is this Government willing to invest the financial resources needed to fix the system?

"Truthfully, I have to say that I have little faith in this review being any different from any others which have been done.

"History will show that we have spent lots of tax payers money on reviews in the past and then have not bothered to implement any of the recommendations from those reviews. "