the second of two parts, former Premier Sir John Swan continues his prescription for improving public schools, beginning with the need for improved forms of social development.

We need to do more to improve the circumstances that stand between our children and success -- we need to improve parenting skills; address the fear and loneliness of many "latch-key'' kids; and establishing out-of-schools mentoring and adult friendship programs for teens who are drifting without caring adult relationships. Unless we intervene more children run the risk of missing out on that success-building cycle and we all run the risk of creating an underclass of adults less prepared for work, less able to contribute to the boarder society. They will experience hardship not opportunity. Each of these examples falls outside the walls of the school but very much inside the walls of teaching. Conditions at home and relationships outside the school play an important part in preparing young people to feel confident, worthwhile, ready to learn and to take on an adult role in society. for the sake of such children and for the sake of Bermuda, we must do whatever we have to do to educate and to continue to grow and be prosperous and peaceful.

Social development is the glue that holds the entire system of public education together. By social development, I mean those decent human qualities accepted and endorsed by every culture and every religion throughout human history -- the universally recognised characteristics that make a person civilised.

A companion concern to academic excellence is the challenge of developing character, conscience, citizenship and social responsibility in our students.

This is one of the most fundamental problems facing education today.

We are speaking of respect -- respect for self, for other worthwhile institutions, for our country, for our heritage, for God. We all know what the opposite of respect is -- it is contempt for the rights and property of others and disrespectful behaviour, and we all know that we see far too much of it today.

We are speaking of work -- the value of honest effort expended with the honest expectation of just reward. We all know the opposite is all too common: laziness and the desire to get something for nothing.

We are speaking of fairness -- it is a basic Bermudian belief that each of us has a God-given right to a fair and equal chance.

We are speaking of self-discipline -- the learned ability to pursue all things in moderation and to restrain those appetites that have the potential to injure ourselves and others. Too many people lack the quality of self-discipline these days. That is one reason our prisons and our drug and alcohol rehab centres are so corroded.

We are speaking of thoughtfulness -- the very thing we strive to teach our children, but which seems to be too often absent in the public comments and actions of some adults.

We are speaking of responsibility -- the historic and traditional responsibility of our public schools to teach those simple, fundamental and universal values and virtues, like good manners and common decency, necessary to good citizenship and a fulfilling life -- the responsibility to teach responsibility.

More teachers or other school people are finding themselves exposed to ill-mannered parents. Therefore schools more than ever have a big responsibility for inculcating good values, virtues and character in their students.

Schools can and must do a lot more on social development and the basics.

Teachers Let me say at the outset, we have a number of incredibly competent teachers in the public school system. Good teaching matters. Most parents have long known this and research confirms it. We need more competent teachers to teach the high academic standards now expected of students. And to quote Dale Butler, "You also need to be able to remove incompetence laziness, unprepared people, just as you can in the private sector''. There are poor teachers who must be weeded out of the system forthwith. And far too many teachers who have acquired basic credentials are not securing the training, support and encouragement they need to remain and grow in their profession.

But no profession is made healthy by focusing on what's bad and, today, we need a national strategy to strengthen teaching. We need to start treating teachers as valued, respected professionals and modernise their pay structure.

In the USA the less academically able chose teaching - as measured by college entrance exams. We have no firm evidence that Bermuda mirrors the USA's experience. Nevertheless, we, therefore, need to raise standards, prestige and compensation so that our best and brightest young people choose to enter the teaching profession and teachers who can't meet the standards should choose to enter a less demanding line of work.

Are we doing enough to attract, screen and retain competent teachers? We are at a critical juncture in our educational system. We now need something far more imaginative and much bolder than the projection on a somewhat expanded scale of what we have already done. The bottom line is that we need competent teachers and if we can't find them locally we should search the world, like the private sector, to recruit competent teachers. To make the Bermuda Dream achievable for all, we must make our public education system first rate. This means having first class teachers. Good teachers make all the difference. Good teaching matters.

Teachers' Salaries Currently Bermuda's teachers are paid essentially on a single-salary schedule which currently provides pay increases for years of experience, university degrees, posts of responsibility and so on.

Many jurisdictions in the USA and Britain have introduced "skills-or competency-based pay'' or "Performance Pay''.

Skills-based pay is clearly distinguishable from individual performance-based pay systems that traditionally have evaluated teachers against one another for a fixed pool of funds. Individual performance systems usually aim to identify and reward the "best'' teachers with additional pay. In contrast, skills-based pay rewards teachers for attaining and being able to use knowledge and competency valued by the school such as the ability to teach all students a certain king of mathematics. Skill attainment is judged against a predetermined, clear-cut standard. Skills-based pay systems thus focus individual skill development on the knowledge and skills necessary for the organisation to accomplish its goal.

When the British Education Minister David Blunkett introduced the performance pay proposals in November 1998 he said they were intended to trigger the most radical reform of the teaching profession for more than 50 years. Generally, the program would reward teachers for how well the children in their individual classrooms did. These innovative pay systems, which have been borrowed from the private sector, have been refined so that they are transparent and fair.

These new pay systems were introduced primarily as a device to attract high quality teachers.

Length of the School Year The average industrial country sends its children to school 207 days per year.

In Japan and Germany, children go to school 240 days per year. Our children are in school 200 days per year. Over the course of a 12 year school career, that gap adds up to almost two and a half extra years of instruction for Japanese and German children. We know why our school year is so short. In the 19th and early 20th century, Bermuda was a primarily farming community and we needed children to help out on the farms.

Why shouldn't we have our schools open twelve months a year and employ our teachers on a respectable year round basis.

Recommendations New global and historical evidence has provided new ways of thinking about the way education is provided by society. If sustained economic prosperity is our goal, then high quality public education must be our first priority.

This leads to priority number two. This country must give more dignity and status to its teachers.

Third, this country needs a public educational system that embodies high standards of conduct and achievement.

Fourth, in shaping a national strategy for public education we need less bureaucracy. Often our public schools focus too much on bureaucratic procedures rather than on the outcomes of education, forcing teachers and principals to spend more time with paperwork and less time with their students. I have heard it said that because of bureaucracy the public system is where all good ideas go to die. I should imagine that's not always true. In fact, some are born in public schools and die there too.

Fifth, we must treat parents like shareholders in their children's education.

We must develop the most innovative and bold ways to reach the most disengaged parents.

Sixth, we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet and every student should have a personal computer at home.

Seventh, we must make the Bermuda Dream achievable for all. This cannot be done without a system of quality education in our public schools.

Finally, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, the German writer and philosopher, once said: "In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for''. So it is with the education of a child. In struggling to help all our children come to the table of opportunity ready and willing to partake of its fruit. In struggling to transform our public education into one that truly values teaching and learning and in struggling to heal the wounds we inflict on one another across racial lines. We must embrace our diversity so that it becomes a source of economic, cultural and community strength. We are hoping for something better.

What is it we are hoping for? That our children and grandchildren might grow up to lead this country with strength, honour and dignity. That they might seize the opportunities of the new global economy, helping to shape Bermuda and the new world with vision, integrity and optimism.

John Gardner said "A nation is never finished. You can't build it and leave it standing as the Pharaohs did the pyramids. It has to be recreated for each new generation.'' I'm convinced that the most urgent task our generation now confronts is to reinvest our public education system by establishing a more coherent quality curriculum for our schools and a more precise, more humane evaluation of our students so that we prepare our students to be better workers, better citizens and better people.