Government MP Lovitta Foggo has warned of the "negative labels" schools could end up with if their exam results are made public each year.

The Ministry of Education plans to start publishing test results in 2009 to improve accountability as part of the reform of the public school system.

A meeting of the parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Education heard on Wednesday from Jeff Conyers, one of the members of the public helping the interim executive board on education implement the recommendations in last year's Hopkins report.

Mr. Conyers, who is leading a team looking at accountability, said the idea was that those schools found to be failing would be able to get the most assistance.

But PLP Whip Ms Foggo, a former teacher, asked: "What about schools getting negative labels?" She said much of the impetus for the last restructure of the system was to try to shed the poor image of certain schools.

"If we are going to publish things like that I can't see how we are going to stop that same thing from happening. You can't convince me that that's not going to have a detrimental impact. Growing up in Bermuda, I'm not convinced."

Mr. Conyers said parents wanted to hold schools accountable and would welcome knowing if their child's school had problems. "As a parent, if you actually had a kid in a school right now that was going to get all that attention, I think you'd want it," he said.

Mr. Conyers described public schools as having an "overfill" of teachers, while student numbers were shrinking. "My own view is that once you get the results out on the table you are not going to be able to hide behind it," he said.

He suggested that the Ministry of Education should be less hands-on, analysing what was happening in schools rather than trying to run them. "A lot more dialogue needs to happen with principals," he said.

He praised the work of the cross-party committee, which is reviewing how the ten recommendations from Professor David Hopkins and his team are being enacted in order to report back to Parliament, joking that everything in Bermuda should be run in such a bi-partisan way.

"If Bermuda ever had an example of why politicians should come together and work together to find a solution, this is it," he said.

Special educator Timeco Richardson, who has been leading the parent business partnership team, told the committee that plans were afoot to create a national parent-teacher association, with a meeting to be held before Christmas and an organisation hopefully established before the end of January.

Her team did a survey of parents at a primary school, middle school and senior school. The feedback from the primary parents was "wonderful", she said, while the middle school still hadn't sent out the questionnaire after six weeks. The team got two or three responses back from the senior school.

Ms Richardson said a message needed to go out to parents to support their children throughout their school career and beyond.

She also spoke about students with special educational needs, suggesting that as many as three out of ten at middle school level and five out of 17 at primary level need support.

The next meeting of the committee, which is open to the public, is at the House of Assembly on Tuesday at 1 p.m.