Teachers have branded an education review which called for an overhaul of schools as “unfair”.

Members of the Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) revealed a mixed reaction to the Hopkins Report when it held a general meeting. According to acting union president, Anthony Wolffe, many felt the assessment team had ignored them and had just “skimmed over” classes to obtain a “snapshot” of standards.

He said: “There was a mixed reaction to the report as in most cases, teachers were not happy about the way in which they were assessed by the review team. “They said that at no time did the members ask them any questions and they felt left out of the process. They felt it was nothing more than a snapshot of the public educational system.”

He added: “Some teachers said the members spent 15 to 20 minutes in the classroom but were not seen to take any notes.

“They were also disappointed that the report didn’t speak well of the students — it was very negative and never addressed the students doing well. It just talked about the system as a failure so a lot of teachers did not feel it would have a good impact on those students, in terms of encouraging them.

“A lot of the teachers thought the assessment process was unfair. They said the team just skimmed through the exercise books of a few students and only asked them questions, as opposed to saying anything to the teachers at all.”

The Hopkins Report was the result of investigations by a team of education experts led by British professor David Hopkins.

It called for a “rapid raising of standards” after concluding that four schools are failing and others are satisfactory — or worse.

The team were called in to pinpoint why more than half the Island’s senior school students are failing to graduate.

After visiting each of Bermuda’s schools in March, they claimed a quarter of lessons were taught inadequately, the curriculum was inconsistent and principals were failing to ensure quality teaching.

Among their recommendations to improve teaching standards were an introduction of external assessors, staff performance reviews and the monitoring of each pupil’s progress. They also recommended that CedarBridge Academy and Berkeley Institute join together in a federation and that the school leaving age is raised to 18.

Education Minister Randy Horton has said the Government intends to implement some recommendations over the next school year but has not specified which. Mr. Wolffe said: “Other than being invited to the meeting for the stakeholders we have not heard anything from the Ministry over the report, as to whether we will be involved in the recommendations. We would like to think that we would be.”

The report also called for a “radical overhaul” of the Ministry of Education, describing it as “poorly-led and mismanaged” and “secretive”. Experts recommended sacking senior Ministry staff and bringing in a temporary external executive board to oversee a “major restructuring”.

Mr. Wolffe said: “There were definite mixed feelings regarding this.”

But he added: “In many cases, what has been presented so far from the report has not come as a surprise to many of the teachers.”

The Union will now formulate a response to the Government.

“As we move forward we will certainly bring these concerns up,” said Mr. Wolffe. “Everyone is now waiting for the full report to be tabled in Cabinet so we can all have a copy of the report, as up to now we’ve only seen a summary.”

Up to 200 union members attended the meeting on Thursday, where pay was also discussed.

Mr. Wolffe said: “Contract negotiations have been going on since March of last year and we basically updated our teachers to where we are, in what was a very constructive meeting.

“We’ve advised them that the discussions have not broken down and are still ongoing, and that we are hoping very shortly that things will come to a conclusion.”

Teacher’s union calls Hopkins Report shallow and ‘unfair’