Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons has welcomed a plan to bring in an overseas curriculum for Bermuda's public schools.

The Opposition MP said adopting and adapting a proven curriculum from elsewhere would free up resources which could be spent on other things, such as technical education.

"The Minister's decision to take a different course, to look at a number of international curriculum, is certainly something that we can support," said Dr. Gibbons.

"It's something that we proposed during the Budget debate and had said something similar before that. I suggested Canada as a curriculum that we might be able to adopt.

"The UK is also a good choice. Really what we would like to see is a careful look at a number of different ones."

Flaws with the current public school curriculum were flagged up in the 2007 Hopkins report on schools and after a recent $180,000 audit by US educational association Phi Delta Kappa.

But a plan to rewrite the curriculum for the first time in more than a decade was ditched after the interim executive board set up to implement education reform was disbanded at the end of last year.

Education Minister El James and new Board of Education chairman Mark Byrne revealed earlier this week that rather than order a rewrite they had tasked a subcommittee with reviewing curricula from abroad, including from the UK and Canada.

Dr. Gibbons said he hoped that once a suitable choice had been made, there would be a renewed focus on technical education. "That's something that appears to have been dropped in the last year or so.

"This should free up both some time and resources within the Ministry to concentrate on that. I think technical education has always been the orphan as far as the Ministry is concerned. But it's obviously very important for a substantial number of kids."

The UBP politician said he wished the decision to look overseas for a curriculum had been taken sooner in the reform process which has followed the Hopkins report.

He added that it wasn't an idea unique to the Opposition, but one he had heard teachers, principals and other education professionals espouse.

"There was no reason why we shouldn't be looking at a first-rate curriculum from overseas. This is not a new idea. The private schools have done it to a large degree. It just seems more sensible to me."

Dr. Gibbons pointed to Canada as a country with an excellent technical and vocational curriculum. He said the good thing about bringing in a curriculum from abroad was the accompanying assessment and testing. "You don't have to reinvent the wheel," he added.

Former National Training Board and Bermuda College chairman Nalton Brangman said he also hoped technical education would soon get the attention it deserved.

"It's potentially one of the most significant steps the Government can make," he said.

He said he recommended adopting a curriculum from Canada several years ago, when Terry Lister was Education Minister, due to its excellent academic and technical components.