Teachers’ union leader Mike Charles is calling on Government to issue clear statistics on the number of students graduating from the two senior public schools. The general secretary of Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) spoke out after figures released by the Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy last week indicated an overall pass rate this year of almost 82 percent. The figure represents a huge leap from 2006 — when just 48 percent made the grade.

Mr. Charles told The Royal Gazette that the Ministry of Education’s silence on the dramatic improvement did not help people to make sense of the figures. “Somebody needs to come up to the wicket and say why the figures this year are so different,” he said. “What have they done so differently.

“ To make such a drastic leap, what have they done?”

He questioned whether this year’s figures had been collated differently. “Is this the way they should always have been collating it?” he said.

The Ministry has failed to answer questions on this year’s soaring graduation rate, with a spokeswoman simply attributing it to brighter children in the class of 2007. But Mr. Charles said: “I think that’s a ridiculous statement. All of a sudden they ate clever soup! It’s confusing.

“We have a lot of bright kids in the system but there are things that need to be done.” He said the rise was particularly perplexing considering that changes planned for the public school system following a review earlier this year have yet to be implemented.

The review team, led by Professor David Hopkins, found public schools to be “on the brink of meltdown” and claimed one of the two senior schools was failing. “Nothing has been done yet,” said Mr. Charles. “We do have things to correct.”

This year’s rate — based on 173 graduates out of 212 senior four students — has been calculated by The Royal Gazette>using the same method that the Ministry of Education apparently used last year. It said in January that 148 S4 students graduated from the class of 2006 out of a possible 309, giving a 48 percent rate. Attempts to find out why there were almost 100 fewer students in S4 this year have failed.

Mr. Charles said he thought measuring the rate based on how many students started S4 and how many left with a Bermuda School Certificate was the fairest method. “I can’t see how you can blame the school for kids who started four years ago unless you are tracking them and the Ministry is not tracking them,” he said.