Last week’s announcement that just 48 percent of students graduated from the Island’s senior schools should be cause for national concern.

Education Minister Randy Horton deserves credit for accepting that an increase in the 2006 graduation rate from the previous two years is not cause for celebration.

In fact, the improvement is welcome, and suggests that some things must be going right. But it is worrying that these rates include only those students who started the final year of high school. What happened to other students who dropped out of school early? Of course, there is some disagreement about the value of a diploma from the Bermuda school system, compared for example, to GCSE results or a Canadian high school diploma.

Even so, these results are not good, and Mr. Horton’s decision to hold a review is welcome. This newspaper is not going to get into the fight over whether Mr. Horton’s review is the best route or if the Association of School Principals’ call for a board of inquiry would be better, or whether Mr. Horton was given a warning or not. But any inquiry should be broad-based and should look into the system in depth. The reasons for low graduation rates do not start in the Island’s high schools, but are clearly systemic.

The inquiry should also look at how the whole system is structured and run, and must look at the role the Ministry and Department of Education have to play. There are many professional educators who hold the education bureaucracy responsible for many of the problems in public education, and the inquiry should determine whether these are the typical complaints that come from those on the front line towards “head office” or if they have some validity.

Teaching standards, whether the code of conduct helps to improve discipline or makes it worse, ways to include more extracurricular activities in the schools, whether the curriculum is appropriate, and how to make schools more accountable should all be part of the inquiry. It is not at all clear that curriculum is the problems, although continuous tinkering and efforts to add all kinds of additional elements to the system are worrying. Instead, a rigorous teaching system that ensures students have achieved basic standards of literacy and numeracy must be established. Support for students who are having trouble — and for exceptional students who need to be challenged — is also essential.

Mr. Horton must also beware of grade inflation. He has set an ambitious target of doubling the graduation rate — which would take it 96 percent. This must not be done simply by reducing standards or easier marking. That’s one reason why adopting an internationally recognised certificate would be welcome. It is also worrying that females outperformed males by almost two to one. The fact that just one third of the graduates were male will come as no surprise, but shows why support and new thinking on educating males must come about.

Given that Bermuda’s public schools are predominantly black, it stands to reason that the majority of young black males in the school system are failing. On the basis that education — and especially university education — is the single most important determinant of financial and professional success in Bermuda, it is no surprise that black males lag behind black females and all whites (Bermudian and otherwise) in virtually all economic categories.

Mr. Horton has rightly said that Bermuda needs a highly educated workforce, and if Bermuda is ever to achieve economic “empowerment” for black Bermudians, then his task is more important than ever.