The failings of Bermuda?s public schools have been thrust into the spotlight once again this month with Government backbencher Renee Webb launching a lengthy diatribe against the education system and its teachers in the House of Assembly. In an interview with Sam Strangeways, under-attack Education Minister Terry Lister explains how he plans to improve the graduation rate ? and what teachers should be doing to help.

Terry Lister is used to complaints about and criticisms of Bermuda?s public schools. Although he?s been Education Minister for just over two years, Mr. Lister has taken a fair number of beatings for what many perceive as an ongoing crisis in the Island?s state education system.

Last year?s graduation statistics for Bermuda?s two public senior schools ? Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy ? make for dismal reading. Sixty one percent of students graduated at the former and just 49 percent at the latter. The overall pass rate was 53 percent.

It?s a figure which must, by now, be tiresomely familiar to Mr. Lister. He certainly looks weary when it is quoted to him, though his face betrays this for just a split-second before returning to his more usual expression of studied concentration and, perhaps, slight mischief.

Mr. Lister is a man who clearly does care about Bermuda?s children and the way they are being educated at school and cared for at home. That?s obvious in the way he peppers his conversation with anecdotes about students he has encountered.

He starts by telling a story ? which he repeated in the House of Assembly ? about a boy at a school he was visiting correctly identifying a dining table on a ?flash card? and explaining that it was where his family ate their meals.

The teacher asked the rest of the class where they ate their meals. ?Every single one said ?lying on the floor, watching TV?,? Mr. Lister says, shaking his head sadly.

Mr. Lister believes it?s factors like that ? what he sees as profound changes in the way children are being brought up on the Island ? which account for poor literacy in children?s early years and problems later in their school life. It?s a theme he returns to again and again as he defends Bermuda?s public schools.

?We have too many children who come into our school system and whose use of language is appalling because they don?t use the words at home,? he says. ?They don?t sit around the dinner table, talking, learning how big words are used, learning sentence structure.

?They don?t talk; they watch television or they are in front of a PlayStation. These are the things that come to school. We are overcoming deficiencies that didn?t exist one or two generations ago.?

Two weeks ago, just before backbencher Renee Webb?s explosive comments in the House of Assembly on the accountability of teachers in the system, a Berkeley Institute teacher claimed publicly that a lack of resources in schools was to blame.

Mr. Lister looks mildly peeved at the mention of David Chapman?s name. He says he is ?disappointed? that one of his teachers would speak out in such a way. The problem, according to the minister, is definitely not scant resources. ?It?s amazing when you read about lack of resources in a resource-rich system,? he says. ?Any teacher that comes to Bermuda from anywhere else in the world has to pinch themselves.

?I spent an hour this morning at one of my schools. They have books galore, they have games galore. You name it, we have it and it is like that right through the system. Resources are not an issue at all, if you compare us to anywhere in the world.?

Although he defended public school teachers in the House after PLP backbencher Ms Webb?s highly critical remarks, he clearly does not see them as blameless himself.

?I think we have a variety and a mix of teachers and teaching abilities,? he begins carefully. ?I think some of our teachers are beyond outstanding and I think some may not be as strong as we would like.?

He adds: ?When I was in school we had 30 to a class. My father had 40. Today we have 15. My teacher, teaching 30, was expected to teach all of us.

?If we have got teachers teaching classes of 15 and saying the curriculum isn?t rich enough, can they teach? It?s fair to ask this. They are responsible for stretching them. The responsibility really does lie with the teachers to exploit the materials that are available to them.?

Mr. Chapman complained that he constantly had to pitch his lessons to the middle ground.

Mr. Lister responds: ?The curriculum should pitch to the middle ground so that you get to everyone but we should be reaching down and reaching up. Who is supposed to give them that challenge? Our curriculum is first-class.?

He does admit though that there is a problem with a lack of time in the school year to fit in everything students need to learn. Trips away from the classroom, however beneficial, eat into the time needed to cover the curriculum. ?The teachers are challenged to try to stay on course,? says Mr. Lister. ?That?s a very real challenge. We are trying to identify what we consider to be the essential curriculum. When they leave P3 or P4 what should they know??

What is clear to all in Bermuda is that the public school system has not yet recovered from the ?disruptive year? of 2003 which saw the Bermuda School Certificate (BSC) introduced and just 26 percent of students graduating.

CedarBridge and Berkeley now both offer GCSE qualifications to students, before they sit the BSC. Mr. Lister says misunderstanding about the educational level of the BSC drives him ?crazy?.

?GCSE is taken in what we call S2 and S3,? he says. ?In order to graduate, you have to complete S4. Those students who achieve this have exceeded the level of GCSE work.

?In order to graduate from the system you have to get a BSC. The pass rate is 50 per cent but bear in mind that?s the national pass rate. Many people don?t graduate all around the world. When I was in high school we didn?t even track graduation rates. We had no school leaving certificate.?

He adds proudly that for the last two years there has been a 100 percent pass rate for students sitting French and Spanish at Berkeley. In reality, this amounts to about 15 students a year.

But regardless of what is going on within schools, the Education Minister is preoccupied with what goes on when students go home.

He cites social problems, such as drug use, poor housing and bad parenting, as the real reasons so many students fail to graduate.

?We want to move our graduation rates up but I?m not particularly impacted by it because I know the challenges my students face,? he says. ?We have lifestyle changes that are having a severe impact on children?s ability to learn.?

In particular he is worried about single-parent families and the impact on young men of growing up in a largely female environment.

?It plays out badly when they get to senior school,? he says. ?Gangs are just a result of young boys wanting to be part of something. Not having a proper male influence, they take it from each other. That?s the downside that lies ahead of us if we don?t correct this problem.

?We need teachers to be more sensitive to the differences between boys and girls and how they react to things and careful in how they punish. A girl does something in class and she?s spoken to or ignored. A boy is sent out.?

He says the Government?s three-year campaign on literacy and numeracy is beginning to pay off.

?We are working as hard as we can and trying to turn all of our primary school teachers into reading specialists to try to raise the level of reading and the level of language awareness. That?s our real focus; that?s number one on our list.?

And he says there has been investment in para-educators and a drive to recruit more male teachers.

He says the standard of teaching is being addressed with the registering and licensing of teachers to ensure they have the right qualifications and most up-to-date training.

?I would put my head on the chopping block and say that 99 per cent of teachers in the system now are certified,? he says. ?We might have supply teachers who are not but that?s it.?

He admits there is a teaching shortage which is getting worse each year despite the lure of a $50,000-a-year starting salary.

?It?s not that teaching is less attractive ? it?s that other areas are more attractive. I think $50,000 is a fantastic salary,? he laughs. ?But it?s unrealistic to expect young people to make teaching their choice across the board.?

The minister is adamant that not all of the system?s ills can be solved by Ministry boffins and teachers. ?It has to be a community effort; we have to have parents on board,? he says.

?What is up to us is to ensure that if a parent trusts us with their child at five-years-old when that child leaves us at 18 he has performed as well as he can perform.?