Private schools say pay rises for teachers will further push up their costs
It is also more than 50 per cent higher per student than the most expensive public school districts in the United States.
Roy Napier, headmaster at the Bermuda High School, was sure that the settlement with the public school teachers ? that translates into an overall cost increase of 4.3 percent for the Government ? would directly affect the private schools.
"This will lead to increased costs to the private schools, but some of these costs were anticipated and may have been factored in to private school fee increases for next year."
Sister Judith Marie Rollo, headmistress of Mount St. Agnes Academy, said that the matter was under review.
Margaret Hallett, headmistress of Somersfield Academy, was in no doubt about the likely effect of the settlement for her school.
"This settlement by Government will have a very serious effect on the private school system, and have serious implications for our financial situation, because the bulk of our costs is in our staffing," she said.
Wendy Augustus, head of the Parent-Teacher Association, said she had mixed feelings about the settlement, and while acknowledging the high cost of the public system, stressed the importance of the system being able to deliver a quality education.
"As parents, we are glad that the teachers are back in the classroom, and hope that the settlement bodes well for all concerned. Parents have a concern that the level of education will not improve, and that children will not get the education they need, and deserve.
"The public system can't be selective, and, at the end of the day, the public schools are still producing children who can go out into the work world, and to university. But there are some teachers who are not giving the level of instruction they should be giving. As parents, we have to stay focused on whether we are getting value for money in terms of quality of education."
The operational cost of the public system in the current fiscal year is $100.3 million, according to the Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance. With 6,427 children in the system, including 404 pre-schoolers, the average cost per public system pupil of any age is $15,606.
That may seem like an extraordinary number, given that the private schools charge fees ranging from $7,150 at the Seventh Day Adventists' Bermuda Institute, although that may be subsidised by the Church, to $10,820 at Saltus Grammar School and its Cavendish Preparatory. Warwick Academy charges $8,640. Mount St. Agnes charges $7,260 for primary and $8,700 for senior students. Somersfield Academy charges $10,500 and Bermuda High School charges $10,750 per student.
With 3,580 children enrolled at these six private schools, and, therefore, 10,007 children in schools island-wide, the public system educates 64 per cent of Bermuda's children, and the private sector 36 per cent.
These numbers do not include home-schooled children, or children overseas at boarding schools, but a source with knowledge of the system believes that their numbers may approximate 500 children in total. Some educators believe that the proportion of children being educated outside the public school system is now more than 40 per cent and expect that number to reach 50 per cent in a few years.
Given the overwhelming importance of employee salaries and benefits in the total cost of education, it is not surprising that the principal reason for the difference in costs (and we are aware that we are comparing public costs with private fees), is the dramatically higher number of teaching and non-teaching staff per student in the public system.
With a total of 1,138 employees in the Ministry of Education, 853 teachers and 285 education officers, administrators and other non-teaching staff, the ratio of students to teachers is 7:1 and the ratio of students to non-teaching staff is 23:1 The total number of teachers in the private sector is 300, and there are 86 non-teaching positions. Therefore, the comparative ratio of students to teachers in the private sector averages 12:1 and the ratio of students to non-teaching staff is 42:1.
There are differences in the private sector which are mostly reflected in the differences in fees. The student/teacher ratios are 10:1 at the Bermuda High School, Bermuda Institute, and Somersfield, 12:1 at Saltus/Cavendish and 14:1 at Mount St. Agnes and Warwick Academy.
It is difficult to compare costs per student in very much larger jurisdictions, but the US State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs advises foreign students who want to attend public secondary school that they must pay "the full, unsubsidised per capita cost of education . . . in the school district where the public school is located. Costs normally range between $3,000 and $10,000."
Bermuda's costs are, therefore, more than 50 per cent higher than the most expensive school district in the United States.
In most developed jurisdictions, proponents of public education generally, and fairly, complain that public systems are under-funded in comparison with private schools and that the ratio of students to teachers is usually considerably higher in other public systems than in the comparative private sectors.
Bermuda has exactly the opposite situation, with more than 50 per cent more teachers per student, and almost 100 per cent more non-teaching staffers per student, in the public system than in the private system.
Given the relatively higher cost of everything in Bermuda compared to the United States, it is perhaps not surprising that the cost per student in Bermuda, compared to the State Department estimates of secondary school costs in the US, range from 50 per cent to five times higher than the US, depending on the school district.
Teachers in the public system in Bermuda are paid considerably more than teachers in the US public system, as one would expect given Bermuda's considerably higher income and GDP per capita. One educator described Bermuda's public school teachers as the highest paid in the world.
However, local and visiting educators routinely compare the academic performance of students in the US and Bermuda public systems, and find that those performances are comparable, in spite of the very much lower ratio of students to teachers in the Bermuda system than in the US.
In the end, most taxpayers are concerned about getting value for money, and Shadow Education Minister Neville Darrell is concerned that the academic product of the public system falls short of that, and that Bermuda should raise its sights in terms of comparative performance.
"There's too large an administrative hub in the middle that does little or nothing, really. The disparity in costs (between the public and private sectors) is a structural fact. I would like to see the structure much more efficient and outcome-driven.
"The system is defined by inertia. It needs to have higher standards built into it, and be assessed in terms of outputs, which should be measurable and predictable.
"Given the structure we have, it is not unreasonable to believe that the public education system can be more efficiency-driven. My thesis is that because the environment is more enabling and less competitive in many ways, we should be able to get a better outcome in terms of performance measures, and a better understanding of the students themselves."
Mr. Darrell insisted the United Bermuda Party had been pressing for clearly-defined national standards for academic performance, a goal which should be easily achievable considering the structure, and that Government should be measuring the output of the schools, with both objective academic measurement tests, and broader tests of student interest and commitment measured by attendance and the rate of retention of students in the system.
"You should be able to get a pretty good profile of the performance of the schools. During the Budget Debate, I took the view that schools should be very much more accountable to the general public, in the same way that we require that certain statutory bodies produce annual reports to Parliament.
"We should do the same thing with the education system, so that we know the challenges that are there, and the output measures.
"We all feel good about public education, and we are all committed to that, but we should have a better sense of what we are spending the money on, and how it has worked out in terms of value for dollar. Where are the resources being spread? If they are being spread evenly, and I don't think they are, what kinds of results are we getting? "
Mr. Darrell is in no doubt that the Government has reneged on a clear, publicly-stated commitment which it made back in 1998.
"They said in their 1998 manifesto that they would be insisting on higher standards, and that is something that we have been holding their feet to the fire on. Obviously, we all want to see higher standards, but let's get on with it.
"In the Budget debate, I suggested we look at the 'Terra Nova' scores, which are hardly strong academic measurements, but even these scores have shown no substantial gains over time."
Mr. Darrell believes that Bermuda errs in making comparisons to US academic standards, and that, given Bermuda's more expensive and extensive public structure per capita, it would be more appropriate to compare Bermuda to jurisdictions like Canada and the Scandinavian countries, where literacy and academic standards are higher than in the US.
"They should be our benchmark, rather than the US, where the public system does not compare well with other developed nations. In terms of our student/teacher ratios and the potential of our organisational structure, let's look at higher models of output and strive in that direction.
"Fifteen thousand dollars per student is particular to our reality here, but with that structure, we should be able to achieve a consistently higher result than they get in the US.
"The higher administrative cost component in our system should incorporate a 'Research and Development' group, so that we could look at the system from a more empirical standpoint, rather than accept the more anecdotal reports we receive.
"We should look within the structure itself and try to redefine some of the modules to give us greater value for the dollar. Higher overall school and test performances are the only appropriate measures of value for money. Let's at least get the 'best bang for the buck' with the system we have."
The Ministry of Education had not responded to requests for comment by press time.