Education Minister El James has a simple philosophy when it comes to managing people: "You get more with honey than you do with salt."

It's an apt belief for a man who keeps bees as a hobby and is so far, he believes, paying dividends in his new role in charge of the Island's public schools.

Since he was appointed to replace Randy Horton last October — a change the Premier said was due to the unacceptably slow pace of education reform — there has been a noticeable drop in the number of public rows between those involved in trying to improve the school system.

And the 59-year-old Minister is keen to keep it that way. "In education, no news is good news," Mr. James tells The Royal Gazette. "I don't want to speak too quickly but in the months we have been here, we haven't as yet had any big negative flare ups. We have managed to stay out of the press."

Mr. James, himself a former private and public schoolteacher, puts that down to his inclusive approach to management.

He and his permanent secretary Kevin Monkman, who he brought with him from the Ministry of the Environment, have instituted weekly meetings with the Bermuda Union of Teachers and fortnightly meetings with the Association of School Principals.

"I think our first step was to establish collaboration with them," he said. "They are stakeholders. They feel like they have a solution, just like us. We are now working together to find a common solution and I think we are all enjoying it."

Mr. James has even proposed a monthly meeting with Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons, surely a rare example of bipartisanship in Bermuda's polarised political environment.

"We can't play political football with education," said Mr. James. "If he thinks that he has got good ideas, I want to hear once a month and I'm going to share with him what we are doing.

"What it should do is eliminate some of the arguing on the floor of the House [of Assembly]. Whenever I bring something to the House, he will have helped to paint the whole picture. His autograph will be on everything I do."

Mr. James is all too aware that the portfolio he has been handed could turn into a poisoned chalice, as it has done for others.

"Very few have survived and gone on to great heights," he says of his predecessors, with a rueful smile. "But I have always said that I would rather be busy than bored.

"Yes, it's tough, but when we do get something right, there's a greater satisfaction in it. Education and young people have always been dear to me. I welcome the opportunity of taking on the challenge and improving this education system."

He took over the Ministry about 18 months after the release of the critical Hopkins report on public schools and when its recommendations were already in the process of being implemented.

Two months after his arrival, the interim executive board set up to push through the reform under the chairmanship of Bank of Bermuda CEO Philip Butterfield was disbanded.

Mr. James says: "They had laid a foundation for us and begun to get the ball moving. I don't want to say anything negative.

"I found that there was a lot of work to be done here. I guess, as every Minister before me realised, and all the principals and teachers and the public, there is a lot of work to do."

The Minister has a personal stake in improving schools — his son and daughter both work in public education and he has four grandchildren. "I'm as concerned and have been as concerned about education as everyone else out there."

He says he's confident that the system can be overhauled but that, as part of the Ministry's new culture of accountability, heads will roll if it doesn't, including his.

"None of us are here forever," he says of his Cabinet post. "I don't see myself being here forever but I love a challenge."

That he's well aware of the sizeable challenge ahead is clear; he says that even before taking on the job he heard from employers about their disenchantment with the standard of public school graduates.

"Right now, there is no confidence," he admits. "Employers have very little confidence. The product that we are producing is not what they are looking for in the workforce. They fall short."

But he feels that "tremendous strides" have been made in the last two years in literacy and numeracy and expects the introduction of a new curriculum in 2010 — likely to be based on a tried-and-tested version from another country with local elements — to have a dramatic effect.

Finding a new curriculum is the first task he's given his newly appointed Board of Education and the ultimate goal is to ensure that Bermudian students leave school with an internationally recognised qualification.

As he settles into his new role, the Warwick North Central MP says his honey versus salt approach to management and "the smile that I have on my face" shouldn't lead people to underestimate him. "I can get upset, forceful and demanding if I need to," he says.

He asks that the public be patient and accept that education reform is not going to happen overnight and that those in the system give it their all to bring about change. For a moment, he returns to the subject of honey or, at least, his beloved bees. But he could just as easily be talking about how he'd like to see the Island's public education system operating under his watch.

"I spend hours just keeping the hive open and watching them," he reveals. "Everybody has a job to do. Everybody is doing what they have to do. It's beautiful. If there is ever a lesson for how we should work, it's watching the bees."