public education should be required reading for anyone who is concerned about the Island's schools.

Dr. Peters, who made the comments in yesterday's Royal Gazette , stated that 70 percent of applicants to the College from public schools failed to meet the minimum admission requirements.

And he claimed that many school-leavers are completing their secondary school educations with the attainments of 13- or 14-year-olds.

This does not come as a complete surprise. It was not so long ago that then-CedarBridge Academy principal Ernest Payette revealed the low literacy levels he had encountered with students entering the school; it is no surprise that the same problems still exist.

To give the Government credit, it has made improving literacy a central policy and is devoting people and financial resources to the problem.

The question is how quickly the problem will be solved, especially if Government is devoting its attention to primary schools through smaller class sizes and more staff.

Dr. Peters proposed a much more radical solution. He suggests abolishing the Education Ministry entirely, dumping the Bermuda Secondary School Certificate and giving parents vouchers to send their children to the schools of their choice.

Dr. Peters' proposal is very similar to school voucher programmes which are being debated in the US for many of the same reasons.

The idea is that a decentralised school system in which principals, boards of Governors and parents have more say in the management of the school will provide a better education.

Parents can choose which school they want their child to attend, and the market will determine which schools will succeed based on results and reputation.

There has been some successes in the US with charter schools, which have been given the freedom to set their own standards of discipline and teaching methods.

But a great deal of uncertainty still surrounds the voucher idea. The primary problem lies not with the "good kids'', whose parents will see to it that they enter good schools and stay the course, but with children from deprived backgrounds who may end up in the schools which, parent- or Ministry-run, fail to deliver a sound education.

Dr. Peters also questioned the value of the BSSC and the Bermuda national curriculum. He has proposed that Bermuda adopt a national curriculum from elsewhere which gets back to basics.

Dr. Peters may be correct here. Local schools have moved away from rigorous tests such as the British GCSEs in favour of the BSSC and there seems to have been a parallel decline in attainment.

At the same time, the school curriculum has been encumbered with all sorts of different subjects. A focus on the three Rs as a platform for further learning has been diffused as a result.

Dr. Peters' call for change is timely and valid. Whether Bermuda needs as far-reaching a cure as the one he prescribes, or should go part of the way by giving schools more autonomy and placing more emphasis on results is debatable.

But his ideas should not be dismissed out of hand. As an educator who sees the substandard "product'' of the school system, he should know what the problems are and his ideas for reform should be taken seriously.