talked about changes on hold because of cash but not because of a change in ideas. However some changes are taking place and it is important for Bermuda to know that it may wind up with the new system but with little more debate.

We say that because we feel the public thinks the education problem has gone away. Education is still with us and worthy of consideration.

There are those who oppose the one mega-high school, plus Berkeley Institute on the sidelines plus Warwick Academy gone private, concept as unworkable in practice.

There are those who feel there will be an enormous flight from public education to private schools, here and abroad, no matter the cost, leaving the public system harshly segregated on racial and economic lines.

There are those who see a comprehensive system as downgrading education at the expense of learners.

There are those who think teachers need upgrading but that the system serves us relatively well and needs only a few changes.

The issue is complicated in Bermuda by controversy in Canada over the shortcomings of much the same system that Bermuda plans to adopt. We are beginning to create what other people want to quit.

Against that kind of background we were interested in opinions about Britain's education in a recent edition of London's The Mail on Sunday. These comments were provoked by one area's plan to revive selective schools, thus bringing back grammar schools in all but name.

The opinion says of Britain's education, "We swapped a system which provided an outstandingly good education for a bright minority for an all-together-in-the-same-mess comprehensive system which has failed most of the youngsters it was supposed to help.'' What we found the most disturbing criticism of the British system was, "Intellectual rigour was sacrificed for so-called classlessness to protect children of any stigma of failure, expectations were watered down or abolished by proponents of the view that education was for social engineering rather than intelligence and application. The case for restoring selective education to ensure that this country has the brains to provide the skills that other countries cannot is overwhelming -- but with one important proviso.

"That the quality and resources given to the brightest are also given to the not-so-high-flying, that the less gifted are also encouraged and enabled to succeed.'' It would seem to us that Bermuda has to be very careful not to make the mistakes others have made and not to implement in the 1990s a system which others are beginning to discard.

According to The Mail on Sunday, "For while there was much wrong with the old 11-plus system, it is equally indisputable that we (Britain) lost more than we gained when selective schooling was scrapped.'' There has been a good deal of talk in Bermuda about a new system which would catch those students who now "fall through the cracks''. We were disturbed that The Mail on Sunday said, "Indeed, all the evidence shows that it is precisely the most disadvantaged who have suffered disproportionately from the confused approach of the last two decades, often leaving school without any qualifications, virtually unemployable, good for nothing because no-one has ever taught them to be good for anything else, and who are now the nucleus of our biggest social time bomb.'' That has happened under Britain's comprehensive system and it exactly what Bermuda is trying to avoid by introducing a comprehensive system.