Last week's editorial on education focused primarily on the need to give schools more autonomy and to allow schools and principals to get on with the job.

An article in last week's Economist Magazine adds weight to that argument ? and also takes a different look at calls from some educators on how different ethnic and gender groups within the system should be catered to.

The article dealt specifically with the gap between young black males and others in terms of educational attainment. This is an ongoing concern in Bermuda's education system as well, and various programmes, most notably, and perhaps notoriously, the ASHAY Rites of Passage, have been piloted in the schools to try to address the problem.

The article acknowledges that black Britons of Caribbean descent begin school slightly behind white boys and other ethnic groups. By the time they turn 16, the gulf is enormous; just 27 percent of black male students gain a grade of C or better in at least five GCSE subjects compared to 47 percent of white male students.

The reasons given are many. Schools tend to deal more harshly with black students who misbehave than with whites. Many black students come from broken homes. Lacking black parental role models and often black male teachers in the schools, they emulate rappers and the like instead.

All of those concerns have merit, but The Economist comes up with a new, or rather, an old and forgotten, thought.

The magazine compared test results based on the students who received free school meals, to which only the poorest students are entitled. Those results showed that poor black students actually did better than poor white students.

To be sure, this comparison is not 100 percent scientific, and doing a similar study in Bermuda would be difficult given the paucity of data linking educational attainment and income levels.

The Economist article also showed that levels of attainment are lowest in certain "bad" neighbourhoods with poor schools.

All of that suggests that educational attainment has less to do with ethnicity and more to do with poverty and the quality of schools.

Focusing on improving schools overall may be the best approach to dealing with problems of black attainment and would also have the effect of encouraging those parents who have left the public school system to return. They, after all, have left because they lack confidence in the schools to deliver a solid education rather than because of a lack of "empowerment" programmes.

Community Affairs Minister Dale Butler has long talked about another side of this same problem. If poorer students do badly, at least part of the reason is due to the lack of educational ambition poorer parents have for their children. There are of course, dozens of examples of poor children who have done well, but they are the exception that makes the rule.

The wider problem, as Mr. Butler pointed out, is that poor children are limited by the very paucity of books, educational toys and the like in the home. At a more basic level, they are hamstrung by the very limitations of language of their parents and neighbours. If all you ever hear as a child is "shut up" and "sit down", then what chance do you have? This is where teachers must step in.

If smaller class sizes will help, then that's what's needed. If the traditional school hours of 8.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. need to be changed, then let's change them rather than having "latchkey" kids running riot in neighbourhoods and in Hamilton when they could be doing homework or participating in clubs.

If teachers aren't good enough, then they need to be trained and the training needs to be funded. If they still aren't succeeding, they need to be fired and the teachers' union needs to back high standards, not members who bring their profession into disrepute.

If one or two children are so disruptive that they make it impossible for others to learn, then they need to be removed from the mainstream school system.