week of interviews and site visits.

Audit chief and US educator William Poston told The Royal Gazette that things had gone very well and the Island could expect the $45,000 report on its education system by the end of the year.

Mr. Poston said the auditors -- who came from as far afield as Germany -- had visited every school and had conducted "hundreds of interviews with dozens and dozens'' of parents, community leaders, Education Department administrative staff and school principals.

He added that the document review phase of the audit was nearly completed and the audit -- his 35th of school systems around the world -- should be "very profitable to the Island''.

Mr. Poston -- an associate professor of educational administration at Iowa State University and a member of The International Centre for Curriculum Management Auditing, Inc. -- said the management audit focused on five areas of the school system.

These were administration control, objectives, how schools function as part of a system, programme assessment with feedback and productivity.

Mr. Poston said he expected the end result would have somewhere in the region of 20-25 specific findings.

There would also be recommendations from the auditors as the point of the exercise was to find ways to do things better, he said.

But he stressed it would be "premature'' to suggest what these might be at this early stage.