The millions of dollars invested by Government in public education is producing ?paltry returns?, a Senator alleged yesterday.

Senator E.T. (Bob) Richards said there was a ?crisis in confidence? in Bermuda?s public schools, despite $131 million being pledged in this year?s Budget for education.

And he called for an assessment system which would find out which teachers were not ?making the grade?.

He told the Senate: ?We are putting a whole lot of capital in this one. Nobody would ever deny education is an investment. We expect future returns for that money but we are not getting them.

?It?s not a question of insufficient resources being deployed, it?s a question of the quality of the resources and how they are being deployed. We have paltry returns from our investment in education.?

He said it was amazing that almost half the pupils at the Island?s two senior schools failed to graduate, despite a seven-to-one teacher/pupil ratio and some $18,000 being spent to educate each student.

?We have a whole lot of money being spent per student,? he said. ?We have a very low student/teacher ratio and yet we are not getting results.

?In spite of throwing all this money at the problem, it?s not bringing us much success and it?s not bringing us much respect.?

Sen. Richards said he did not place the blame solely with teachers but said they must be made accountable for standards in schools. He said the UBP had long been calling for teacher assessment.

?I?m sure there are very many superb teachers in our system but there must be some that don?t make the grade as well. We need to find out who they are and decide what we are going to do with them. Education is sort of like a chain and the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.?

He said it was worrying that spending on teacher training had increased by 1,000 percent last year but had gone down by $331,000 this year.

?It?s hard to understand the stop-and-go type of performance. It seems a bit schizophrenic.?

The Senator also called for a return to old-time values and said parents played a huge part in ensuring their children?s educational success.?When you send them off, they have to know they are on a mission,? he said. ?Parents have jobs in Bermuda and the children?s job is school. We have to have this mindset and that mindset could only be inculcated in children by parents

?The performance of the educational system in Bermuda starts at home,? he said, adding that educators had an almost impossible task if society did not help them.

He warned Government to be careful of building ?elaborate ivory tower-like showpieces? such as the Berkeley Institute and to concentrate on the imparting of knowledge.

Opposition Senate Leader, Sen. Kim Swan, suggested a task force was needed to rescue the Island?s public education system, which he described as like a sinking ship.

In an impassioned address, cut short when the Senate broke for lunch, he said that Government could not act quickly enough to improve the teaching of mathematics. ?What is going to happen to these students who are today having to cope with a major deficiency in teaching in that regard??

His UBP colleague, Sen. Gina Spence Farmer, questioned why so many students were not graduating and said parenting was a crucial component.

She added that building state-of-the-art schools such as Berkeley did not necessarily produce the best students.