Professor David Hopkins, whose review team described the Island's public schools as on the "brink of meltdown", said last week he was "heartened" by the progress being made in education.

The UK professor — an advisor to three UK Education Ministers on school standards since 2002 — was last year tasked to pinpoint why more than half the Island's senior school students were failing to graduate.

His ten recommendations in the Hopkins Report are now being implemented by an Interim Executive Board in a radical restructuring of the school system.

The report called for a "radical overhaul" of the Education Ministry and a "major restructuring" in order to initiate a "rapid raising of standards".

A year later, with a blueprint for reform underway, Prof. Hopkins has returned to Bermuda to monitor progress.

He told The Royal Gazette: "I'm very pleased, and particularly in this area (of cluster boards) the working groups have added a great deal of value to our original suggestions.

"They've taken a broad recommendation and really worked with it to a real degree of sensitivity to the social situation."

Prof. Hopkins, who is also HSBC iNet Chair of International Leadership, said: "We are heartened and really impressed by the discussions that have gone on.

So often we find that people will take organisational change for the sake of the change itself, but this is being done with a real sense of purpose towards quality of education for the young people of this Island."