Governor Sir John Vereker raised concerns about the low number of students graduating in his speech ? but official results for the Island?s two senior schools this year have still not been made public.

A Government spokesman told that the results were normally released around this time but said the Ministry of Education was working to produce information ?which is more useful to the public and which shows a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in our public schools?.

Shadow Education Minister Neville Darrell said he had requested the results in the House of Assembly in July but had still not received them.

?Part of the difficulty in public education... is unless you specifically ask for it, you are not likely to get it and sometimes what you get has been fudged or sanitised. I have asked and I haven?t got them.?

Graduation ceremonies for Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy took place in July and summer schools for those students who failed to make the grade ended just before Cup Match.

Berkeley released its own results in August revealing that 63 of the 91 students in the senior four (S4) year had achieved the Bermuda School Certificate (BSC) ? a graduation rate of just under 70 percent and a significant improvement on last year?s rate of 61 percent.

CedarBridge Academy had 196 students in its S4 year. At a graduation ceremony in July, 117 students received certificates, suggesting a graduation rate of almost 60 percent, an improvement on the previous year when the rate was 49 percent.

In 2005, the overall rate for the two schools was 53 percent.

Sir John claimed that two-thirds of young males were leaving school without a BSC. He cited media reports last summer as the source of his information but this newspaper was unable to find such reports or confirm the statistic with Government.

Mr. Darrell suggested the figure was based on anecdotal information. He said males were ?phenomenally underrepresented? in terms of those graduating from public schools.

In this year?s Budget, Government pledged to spend $111 million on public schools. Government backbencher Renee Webb and Opposition MPs claimed that amounted to a cost of $18,000 per child ? more than the yearly fee for many private schools.