At the heart of the values we share as a people there is a fundamental belief that people who work hard, deserve the opportunity to build a better future for themselves and their children. For our parents and grandparents, that belief gave them the strength to work back breaking hours and suffer tremendous indignities to sacrifice for their children?s education. Now, perhaps more than ever, a good education remains the key to opportunity.

Bermuda?s public education system can and should be the envy of the world. Beyond that we believe that the right to a quality education is the birth right of every Bermudian boy and girl and we have a responsibility to ensure that this birth right is more than a cherished dream but a tangible reality for all our children.

Our vision and passion for building a world class education system would move us to make public education the first choice for every Bermudian. But under the United Bermuda Party the notion of First Choice would not focus on extravagant full page ads, pricey marketing campaigns and publicity stunts. After seven years, we all can agree that approach has gotten us nowhere. Substantive changes must be undertaken to allow our public school system to be a model of educational excellence for our children and our country.

The United Bermuda Party believes that:

Quality education begins with quality teachers. No other factor has the largest impact on the quality of a student?s education than the quality of their teacher. A school year spent in a classroom without a quality teacher at the blackboard can mean a child doesn?t learn to read or doesn?t learn basic math while other students his age are mastering those skills. The PLP committed to a program of Teacher Certification together with an Independent Licensing Authorityseveral years ago. But like so many of their promises this initiative has proved to be all talk and no action.

Teacher Certification and Licensingplays an important role in the standardisation of teaching excellence in our classrooms; it improves students? abilities and performance; it accelerates students learning rates and is a key component for evaluating more objective student performance and curricula delivery. As a community, we are requiring our skilled tradesmen and technical professionals to undergo certification in their particular skill area. We should expect no less from our teachers, who are tasked with the responsibility of educating our children and preparing them for the challenges of our modern society and competitive world.

Testing and accountability policies play increasingly important and essential roles in assisting policy makers, educators and legislators to make decisions specific to the development and performance of schools funded by the taxpayer.

Equally, parents want and need to know that their children are achieving and how their school compares with other schools and standards more broadly. In the United Kingdom, education is currently the government?s main priority with raising education standards and attainment levels of all children at the top of the agenda. England is very much a part of the international student assessments currently taking place. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, with its Secretariat in Amsterdam is an international organisation of national research institutions and government research agencies. This organisation carried out the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study (TIMMS) in 2003, with 46 countries participating at either the grade four or eight-grade level or both. Preparations are now underway for the next round of TIMMS, which will take place in 2007.

Will Bermuda be left out of participating in this international study of fourth and eight graders in 2007?

How do Bermudian public school students stand comparatively with the international student populations in areas like mathematics, science and reading literacy?

What is our public education system doing to ensure like benefit and advantage for our children in the global arena?

Our children represent a wide spectrum of ability. They are unique and precious in their own right and deserve an educational environment which enables them to achieve to the best of their ability. It is precisely because of their individuality and uniqueness that we recommend constructive use of objective tests to assist them. Our current testing levels are insufficient to fully inform the public?s understanding of the performance outputs of the system.

The use of diagnostic tests will assist in a diagnosis of children?s learning difficulties? and provide ?evidenced-based procedures for solving them.?

Additionally, tests can be used to investigate?the study of curriculum impacts on specific aspects of achievement.?

Objective tests can be used in ?the assessment of teachers ?strengths and weaknesses.?

Testing procedures can be used to ?measure the overall performance of an individual school or a group of schools? and provide valuable information on how best to distribute the scarce resources available and develop the valuable human resources of the Ministry of Education.

Finally in aligning ourselves with international educational assessment agencies, we can have good snapshots of how our students perform against their peers throughout the world.

Such assessments can help teachers, parents, administrators, and legislators in judging the effectiveness of programs as children move forward in school. Such an approach to public education will have the effect of building in greater levels of transparency and public accountability. This approach will perhaps also build greater confidence in public education by the public at large.

When it comes to education, as a people, we are flying in the dark. We do not know whether programs we have funded are working effectively. We have no objective performance profiles of our schools; no measures of teacher effectiveness; no diagnostic picture of resource allocation and desired results; no understanding of student learning and curriculum design and no clearly defined strategy for the role that computers will play in the education of our children. The time has come for the people of Bermuda to be provided with an annual report outlining the profile and the performance on each of the schools within the public school system. The individual schools should be evaluated by objected educational performance tests, which among other things will evaluate student learning, teacher effectiveness, overall school performance. These reports can be supplemented with information about special features, events and characteristics of the individual school; student absenteeism rates by grade; and parent satisfaction with the individual school.

Information technology has transformed all of our lives and seemingly no aspect of human life has been left untouched by its influence. IT has marched boldly and unabashedly into the world of education both transforming and challenging the way we teach our children. We must seek every possible opportunity to make IT a necessary part of the public education delivery system. In this regard, all of our teachers must be taught to exploit the tremendous potential that exists through the use of this powerful educational medium.

Educational studies have shown that children, even at younger levels, are able to successfully assimilate and navigate through an environment that is rich in IT. We must find ways to use this tool more with this age group and give them the foundation and comfort in working increasingly with IT. In fact, it has been suggested that the introduction of IT in the primary levels of education is akin to the child?s ability to acquire and use language.

We call on the government to make IT one of the primary learning platforms for the delivery of a core curricula throughout the entire public school system and not just at the senior school levels.

We must seize the advantage represented in this powerful learning tool and integrate IT more fully in the public school system as a part of the basic delivery of education and as a key component of sustainable economic prosperity for our country.

Is the Bermuda Union of Teachers working with the Ministry of Education to ensure that all of our teachers are trained in the use of IT in the classroom?

What percentage of our teachers are trained to use IT in our classrooms?

Is there a goal to which the Government is working to ensure that all teachers are IT literate?

Will IT literacy be a necessary part of teacher certification and licensing process when it gets underway? If not, Why not?

Despite all of our progress as a society our schools remain segregated. This segregation of our children is no longer based on race but on economics. Two school systems were wrong in 1965 and it is wrong in 2005. Education should be a source of opportunity not a mark of privilege. The United Bermuda Party believes that people who can?t afford to send their children to private schools deserve the same opportunities as those who can.

Pride and confidence is a necessary ingredient in inspiring the public to view public education as the First Choice for our children but it is not sufficient to inspire the level of confidence required to actually motivate more parental decisions to continue to enrol their children in the public school system.

If we sustain this dream through the provision of adequate funding; insist on a more objective system of accountability and transparency; ensure teacher certification and licensing; benchmark the performance of our public schools with the global community through participation in educational assessment exercises undertaken by International Agencies and an infusion of on-line curriculum throughout the public school system; perhaps then we can truly say that we did all that we could to ensure a high quality education for our children.

Only then will all of us be able to take comfort in the fact that tomorrow will be brighter for all of our children and for ourselves and for our Bermuda.