I am a product of the public school system. I attended the Central School, now the Victor Scott School, the Berkeley Institute, and Bermuda College. Then, for further education, to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. I earned a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Education, and, two years ago, I received a Master's degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Miami. I was a teacher at Berkeley for 20 years, and was head of the Mathematics Department when I was seconded to BEST as project manager a year ago. Not exactly. I was present at a round-table that Minister Paula Cox held with teachers, and I think that I was very vocal! I voiced concern about what I saw as simple solutions not being implemented, and at a later point, I received a call from the Ministry asking if I would take the helm at BEST.

I think that any organisation should take a look at itself after a number of years, and that goes for the Ministry of Education and Development. It was in August 2002, that a group of educators met at the then Sonesta Beach Hotel to look at where the public school system should go, and how it should get there. That's when the Bermuda Education Strategic Team came into being, and the acronym BEST was first coined, under Minister Paula Cox at that time.

: There is involvement from different sectors of the community, the Board of Education in particular, chaired by Philip Butterfield, the CEO of the Bank of Bermuda, and education officers, teachers, and two students.

That was the first stage of BEST. The second stage was when I came on board, and my challenge was to gather members from the general community, the educational community, and the corporate community, to form seven action teams which would look at formulating action plans, with the goal of making our public school system first choice, which is the essential mission of BEST.

The goal is to meet the needs of every single student enrolled in our public school system, and we recognise the scope of the challenge, because the system must accept all students of all backgrounds and intellectual capacities and abilities.

: The seven teams comprise Marketing, chaired by Walton Brown, and Classroom Instruction, led by Henry James, a teacher at the Berkeley Institute. We have Student Achievers, led by Gina Davis, and Partnerships is led by Kristin White, the local co-ordinator for BIBA. The Accountability team is chaired by Ellen-Kate Horton, a mathematics education officer. System Unity is headed up by Jack Ward, the director of Conservation Services, and finally Rita Simons, who is head of Learning Support at CedarBridge Academy, is in charge of the High Achievers team.

You can see from that collection of people, that we have a good cross-section of the community represented on our action teams.

The time line requires that the action plans be completed and synchronised for presentation to Minister (Terry) Lister by the middle of May. Before the presentation of the plan, when I like to think the Minister will give his stamp of approval, we will have a weekend retreat for all of the team leaders, to discuss how the seven separate plans should best be concentrated into one BEST master plan.

We have to study our time lines, our one-year plan and our five-year plan for education. For any organisation's formal structure, you have to determine what the goal is, and anything that is done in Education must fit in that frame-work.

After that five-year period, I dare say we will look at what we have accomplished, how well we have implemented the plans, and ask ourselves if we have to go back and look at some of the recommendations, because of intervening changes in the educational environment, or our community, or society. BEST is not intended to give a one-shot strategic direction, but will respond to the changes we see.

I think when you look at the structure and implementation of the middle school system, and the opening of a purpose-built senior school like CedarBridge Academy and the new Berkeley under construction, you can think of the last initiative dealing with , while the BEST initiative focuses on

What are we looking for our curriculum to achieve? What are our expectations for assessment, and standards? Because when we get curriculum, standards, and assessment aligned, we will know what direction we want to go, and how we plan to get there.

We have to be able to determine, as a result of the educational inputs, whether our students are reaching an optimal level of achievement. The basic objective of education is to more than adequately prepare students for our society, and even though we have a private school system, the public school system is crucial to the viability of any society.

Some people take the view that these situations are a reflection of what occurs in the school system, and one of our challenges is to make sure that we don't try to fit every student into the same mould. Exactly. Some students are going to university, and others directly into the labour force. There are different levels and strata in society, and we have to make sure in our tiny Bermuda society, that the public school system provides students who can operate at each level. In terms of recent societal problems, it is difficult to apportion blame, if that's the right word.

A child's education has more than one component. You're looking firstly to the parent, then to the community at large, before the educational system. If everyone plays their role, then we will find that our students feel that they are a part of society, that they have a stake in it.

Minister Terry Lister is keen to implement more vocational training, because now the National Training Board comes under the auspices of the Ministry, and I see great potential for us to meet the needs of those students who, in the past, may have gone on to what was the Bermuda Technical Institute.

Young males, in particular, need attention paid to how they learn. At primary 1, boys don't have the motor skills to write as girls do, and we should not expect them to perform at standards for which they are not ready. When we have a better idea of and children learn, we can tailor our lesson plans and the curriculum to the individual needs of the student.

Not just in Bermuda. The BEST mission is to ensure that we prepare our students to compete not only locally, but also globally. Bermuda is a tiny island, and if people can get expertise by working abroad for a period, then bring that expertise home, Bermuda will be all the better for it.

We have to look at the world as a shrinking entity, and look at how we communicate within our 22 square miles and across the water. It is very important that students escape the island mentality, and recognise the larger world. They go on the Internet, and that access to information is a given, so they have to learn to make the most of that.

I am a co-ordinator, a strategic planner, and my title is project manager. All of those things. There are seven teams with seven leaders, and a maximum of ten members per team, and my job is to encourage the leaders to stay on task, and keep in mind that we have a deadline.

Success will mean that the degree to which the system needs to be monitored will decrease, but because we have a constantly changing world, society, community, school, we have to set time-lines whereby we look back at what we have achieved. We will ask how BEST is meeting the needs of our society and our school culture.

We will be looking at performance standards, and how parents determine whether their children are ready for the next educational level. What assessments will your children experience? As we implement more vocational programmes, what assessments do we use to measure success in those areas?

We will be implementing a more continuous assessment, so that taking exams becomes more of 'a way of life' throughout school.

Particularly with respect to high achievers, a student planning to become, say, a doctor will have to take exams that extend over two or three days at a time, and we have to create that culture in the public school system, so that students can compete at any level.

Mr. Walton Brown is the chair of the Marketing team, and these are the result of an action plan that we are already implementing. I was pleasantly surprised by a turn-out of about 70 people last time, and we hope for more on Thursday.

It is the second forum on Thursday night, and there are three scheduled. We will be broadcast live on 1340 AM. We wanted to include the general public in our planning, and one of the objectives of the listening forums was to give the public an opportunity to share their concerns, and the challenges they had observed in the public school system.

Importantly, to share their solutions, so that the leaders who are present at the forums will have the chance to incorporate these viewpoints into their action plans. So that when the final BEST action plan is presented to the Minister, he will know that we have incorporated the views of all of the stakeholders.

The central idea is to have everyone in the system ? Minister, education officers, teachers, parents ? understand that they are accountable in terms of performance and responsibility. We must provide consistency, under what we call 'system unity', so that, for instance, an assessment at a school in the West End is comparable to one in the East End.

Our students are depending on us. I have a child only two and a half years old, so I have a personal reason to want this system to be the very best it can be.