Teachers' union leader Mike Charles believes if someone had to be sacked for the slow pace of schools reform it should have been $250,000-a-year US education expert Henry Johnson – not Randy Horton.

This week Premier Ewart Brown said he had fired Mr. Horton as Education Minister because he wasn't getting enough done following the damning Hopkins Report which highlighted drastic change was needed.

But Mr. Charles told The Royal Gazette: "I find it rather surprising because before you get to Mr. Horton there is an interim board which was responsible as far as I know for reform and Dr. Johnson, I thought he was considered an expert.

"I don't see how the Minister could be responsible. I find it rather strange that's who should be sacked."

Dr. Johnson, a former education secretary in US President George Bush's administration, was brought to Bermuda to implement change in the Island's ailing public schools.

Mr. Charles said Dr. Johnson's brief had been to move reform along. Mr. Charles claimed: "He's done absolutely nothing for the students but spent a year and a half amending the Education Act to make himself commissioner but unfortunately the Minister gets the sack.

"If anyone should be fired, it's him."

Asked directly if Dr. Johnson should be fired Mr. Charles said: "Based on the amount of money he is making and his productivity I think so. At least he should be made to give back some of the money.

"The Premier is always talking about productivity and performance."

Mr. Charles questioned why Dr. Johnson had been chosen in the first place as he had been associated with Bush's discredited 'No Child Gets Left Behind' programme.

He said the US was not a country with an admirable record on public education.

"And Dr. Johnson hails from a state which is about 28th on the ranking scale in the US.

"Bringing him here to reform our education was a big mistake, unfortunately the Minister pays for it. That's a whole lot of nonsense, totally ridiculous."

In July this year Parliamentary questions revealed taxpayers had forked out more than $11,000 on Dr. Johnson's monthly flights home.

As well as a $250,000-a-year salary, Dr. Johnson, who came here last September and will stay until next June, gets flights, a $6,100-a-month rent, utility expenses up to $500 per month and a freight allowance of $3,100.

Before he got sacked Mr. Horton had been a staunch defender of Dr. Johnson describing him as worth every penny of his salary.

On Tuesday Dr. Brown appointed Elvin James as Mr. Horton's successor as he called for new energy in the light of the lack of progress. Mr. James is the PLP's seventh Education Minister in ten years.

Asked if he was happy what he had done so far Dr. Johnson said: "Of course not because we are going too slow. We have made significant progress – probably some things people don't want to see happen like an accountability model."

Quizzed on whether Mr. Horton should have carried the can Dr. Johnson said: "That is not my decision, I thought we worked well together."

He said not all the top leadership was in place at the Ministry but when asked about what was happening at the school level he said the first two recommendations of the Hopkins Report had to improve teaching and the leadership of principals.

Now a comprehensive professional development plan is underway.

And Dr. Johnson defended his record in North Carolina, saying that SAT scores had improved significantly under his watch.

Opposition Education spokesman Grant Gibbons said Government was clearly sending a message that education reform was in trouble.

He said 15 months after the review Government was only now starting a plan to implement recommendations.

"There is no real communication, no collaboration, no trust and no real plan.

"In some respects it is unfair to make Randy Horton the fall guy. I think he certainly had an understanding of the public education system having been both a headmaster and a teacher."

The new Minister would take time to catch up and more time would be lost, said Dr. Gibbons. And he added that the interim board, headed by banker Phil Butterfield – Dr. Brown's brother – should take some blame.

"It was arguable whether Randy Horton was running things anyway.

"A lot of the implementation was being run out of the Bank of Bermuda anyway. And Mr. Butterfield as chairman of the interim board needs to take some responsibility.

"But maybe it is more difficult to fire your brother than fire the Minister but clearly there is plenty of blame to go around here."

Little could be expected from the interim board, argued Mr. Charles, who wasn't sure if it was running anymore because of the secrecy surrounding it.

"He's a banker, how could you expect anything? You leave out educators – the people who know about education – and you expect reform to work? I think the board should take some of the blame."

Mr. Charles admitted school reform was a slow process but claimed no progress was being made.

Curriculum alignment ensuring all schools were doing the same things at the same time was needed to make any sense of standardised testing, said the Bermuda Union of Teachers' general secretary.

"You can't do an Island-wide test if schools are doing different things. It cannot work."