Education reform is a complex and challenging process, acknowledges the United Bermuda Party’s Dr. Grant Gibbons. Many different groups influence the education system, and they often represent competing interests. In addition, the perfect education system will never be found, because education is a process that should be responsive to the changing needs of society and rapid advances in knowledge and technology. Yet the need for education reform in Bermuda has never been greater.

“As we know from the census data, lifetime economic success for our children is clearly connected to educational achievement, and for the majority of Bermudian children, particularly black Bermudian children, this ultimately depends on the effectiveness of the public-education system,” says Dr. Gibbons. “Yet graduation rates and standardised test scores have fallen dramatically in recent years, leaving far too many of Bermuda’s young people-more blacks than whites, more males than females-without hope of realising their potential.”

So what’s been holding back education reform? Certainly not resources: Government is currently spending almost $20,000 per student annually in the public-school system- considerably more than private-school tuitions — and the Department of Education budget has ballooned from $66 million in 1998 to $117 million in 2007.

“Yet we aren’t seeing the positive results one might expect from this enormous outlay of public money,” says Dr. Gibbons. “What’s really preventing education reform is a lack of political will, the tight grip of special interests and a resistance to change.

“That’s why our approach to educational reform is as important as reform itself. All parties within the system must agree to keep an open mind and work together with mutual respect to achieve the ultimate goal: to close the educational divide and provide all of Bermuda’s children with the opportunity for economic and personal success.”

Here’s an example Dr. Gibbons provides of why it’s important to keep an open mind on recommendations for change. Many people believe that a low student-teacher ratio leading to smaller class size is a critical factor in academic achievement. This seems almost intuitive: isn’t one-on-one tutoring considered ideal?

“When you look at the big picture, it turns out to be not as important as one might expect and certainly less important than other factors,” says Dr. Gibbons. “International evidence suggests that low student-teacher ratios correlate poorly with strong student performance.”

Researchers at the Brookings Institute reviewed 112 different studies that examined the effect of class size on student achievement; only nine found any positive correlation, while 89 found no significant effect and 14 found a negative effect.

According to the Ministry of Education, Bermuda’s public-education system has added so many educators over the last few years that our student-teacher ratio is now 7:1, one of the lowest in the world, and yet our education system is in crisis. Singapore, which has one of the top performing education systems in the world, has a ratio of 24:1.

Other studies have shown that the quality of teaching plays a much greater role in academic achievement than low student-teacher ratios.

“For example,” says Dr. Gibbons, “researchers at the University of Tennessee reported that the performance of two students who were average (both in the 50th percentile) at age eight could diverge by as much as 54 percentile points by age 11, with the difference attributed solely to the calibre of their teachers.”

However, even in Bermuda, resources aren’t unlimited, and the trade-off for any educational system is clear: either it supports a large pool of teachers and invests less in training and compensation, or it supports fewer, high-quality teachers and provides them with better training and compensation.

Singapore, for example, is highly selective in choosing teacher candidates; once chosen, well-compensated teachers receive over 100 hours of training a year, as well as feedback from high-performing teachers designated as peer coaches.

“All of this suggests that Bermuda needs to focus more on hiring, retaining and training the best teachers,” says Dr. Gibbons.

“Much more emphasis needs to be placed on attracting and hiring high-calibre teachers through a rigorous application procedure and more competitive compensation.

“In addition, customised training for current teachers needs to be significantly improved. According to Government’s budget, an average of only $450 per teacher was spent on training in 2006/07.”

One of the most troubling issues coming out of the Terra Nova exam results since 2000 is the deterioration in the scores of children in our public primary schools to a level that is below the 50th percentile in the United States in both math and reading.

According to Education Department figures, in 2001/02, Primary-2 children were scoring at the 70th percentile for reading ability compared to the U.S. norm, which is the 50th percentile.

But by 2005/06, this had dropped to the 48th percentile.

“What the test results suggest is that even at the early stages of primary school, our public-school students, on average, lag behind their US peers,” says Dr. Gibbons. “In fact, Terra Nova results show that they stay behind all the way through middle and senior school. In other words, many of our children are already behind when they start primary school and they stay behind.”

As any parent knows, once a student gets behind it’s difficult to catch up. A key part of this problem is the concept of “school readiness.”

According to a US study of 3,500 kindergarten teachers in the late 1990s, 46 percent of preschoolers lack the basic skills required to learn, such as impulse control and the ability to follow directions and work with a group.

“Racial test-score gaps in the US, with blacks falling behind whites on vocabulary, begin by age three to four,” says Dr. Gibbons. “Researchers estimate that 50 percent of the test-score gap at the 12th grade already exists by age five.

“Not only are children who score poorly as preschoolers less likely to graduate, they are also more likely to have other social problems as adolescents.”

However, research at Columbia University indicates that this preschool-readiness gap in pre-reading and math skills between black and white children can be narrowed significantly with high-quality preschool education for disadvantaged children.

An economist and Nobel Laureate from the University of Chicago has argued the US should spend more education dollars on preschoolers, because investment at that age pays a far greater return for both individuals and society than money spent on later education.

“This suggests we should implement government funding for preschool education for all disadvantaged children in the two- to four-year-old range,” says Dr. Gibbons. “There are two potential options, which are not mutually exclusive.

“Funding should be applied to expand and improve the Government preschool system, which in September 2006 only enrolled 397 children, in contrast to the 3,000 enrolled in the public primary schools.

Secondly, Government could also fund disadvantaged children in accredited private preschools. In addition, studies show that parenting programs can also make a difference, but the effective ones, such as Head Start in the US, go beyond home intervention and include daycare and parent-child workshops.”Education reform in other countries like the United States has focused on providing a strong academic foundation while allowing families to customise a student’s education to better meet individual abilities and needs. While Bermuda is too small to offer the array of choices available in larger countries and metropolitan areas, Dr. Gibbons says we can do a much better job of providing educational paths suited to the range of careers open to our children.

“Prior to the mid-1970s, the Bermuda Technical Institute provided an avenue for many students following the 11-Plus exam. They enrolled in the Institute from ages 12 through 17 and then either entered the work force or pursued advanced training,” he said. “When Bermuda College was founded in 1974, the Technical Institute evolved into the new Department of Technology at Bermuda College, which offered enrolment at age 17.

“Although well intentioned, the change meant that students of middle- and senior-school age no longer had access to a strong technical curriculum. Recent efforts to build a technical curriculum in the public system have been inconsistent, ineffective and insufficient.

“We should implement an integrated technical curriculum that begins at the middle-school level and moves through secondary school and into Bermuda College. Only then will students have the educational options they need to prepare them for the range of careers available in Bermuda.”

Meaningful education reform is not possible without the diligent assessment of student, teacher, principal and school performance and the publication of results, but there is a clear conflict of interest in having one group responsible for setting, achieving and measuring educational standards.

In order to improve objectivity, transparency and accountability, jurisdictions such as New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore have created an independent inspectorate to perform the measurement function, separate from their respective Ministries of Education.

“In New Zealand, it is called the Education Review Office (ERO); it gives schools detailed feedback and publishes findings, which in some cases have helped to create public pressure for change,” said Dr. Gibbons. “Enthusiastic parents have made the ERO website one of the ten most popular in New Zealand. We need to look at something comparable for Bermuda.”

The suggestions for education reform made by Dr. Gibbons are not intended to be comprehensive.

They are, instead, broadly conceptual-ideas that represent a new way of thinking about aspects of Bermuda’s education system that will put us on a better track for the future.

“What can’t be denied any longer is the need for significant change,” he said. “But effective change requires political will and, perhaps more importantly, a willingness to work together, to respect the concerns of others and to look openly and objectively at the issues before us.

“The growing education divide in Bermuda between blacks and whites and socio-economic classes must close. Failure to get education right is not an option, because failure means wasted lives and a far less stable and secure future for our country.”