Literacy should be a priority for spending in education in today’s Budget, according to the Bermuda Education Network.

Executive director Becky Ausenda claims that nearly all the education experts within the network, including education officers, principals and teachers, agree on one thing: “If we could just get the reading right, everything else would fall into place.”

Ms Ausenda told The Royal Gazette: “We’re hoping to hear more about a national literacy strategy and the special education initiative. All the current measures for reading interventions, including the partnership with the Reading Clinic for psychoeducational assessments should continue to receive more support.

“We would like to see the Reading Recovery programme return to full operational strength, starting with the confirmation of a Reading Recovery Teacher leader.

“There used to be a Reading Education officer who supervised all the reading interventions and literacy initiatives such as the literacy collaborative. Along with other charitable organisations, BEN arranges for volunteers to come and listen to primary students read in order to support reading fluency. Unfortunately these initiatives are not capable of helping the students in most need of reading interventions, so we would welcome more investment in school-based reading specialists.”

The issue of the merging of schools will also be hotly expected in the upcoming Budget. “They have talked about it for years, we have never been obstructive,” said Mike Charles, the secretary-general of the Bermuda Union of Teachers. “Our population is down, so it makes sense. The BUT has never disregarded the option of school mergers but we can’t speculate — we are really in a vacuum until Government has a concrete plan.”

Ms Ausenda added: “The Government previously found savings by moving the Lyceum preschool to the Frances Patton site, but they may decide to increase those savings by merging small primary schools.”

The Budget will also confirm whether an education commissioner would be appointed. Premier Michael Dunkley said last month that an appointment was “imminent” to fill a post that has been vacated since Edmond Heatley resigned last April. Lou Matthews has been serving in an acting capacity since which.

Ms Ausenda pointed out that, according to the 2013-14 Budget, about $500,000 could be saved in human resources costs and salaries if the post remained vacant.

Other areas she hoped to be focused on are the National Math Strategy that was developed, the provision of Wi-Fi in primary schools and, at the high school level, more opportunities for public school students to study A levels through the Cambridge curriculum implementation. This would create an easier pathway for the students to study in Britain.

“UK annual tuition fees are $18,000 compared with US annual tuition fees of over $50,000,” Ms Ausenda said. “We would also like to see more focus from the Career Pathways team on developing the technical trade options and less on business careers, as this is duplicating the many privately funded business career programmes available to students at Berkeley and CedarBridge. Bermuda Education Network has provided a financial services programme for five years and it is undersubscribed.”

The bottom line: it does not seem to be more money that is urgently needed, but an increased focus on where the gaps are.

Shadow Minister for Education Lovitta Foggo said she did not want to comment on the Budget before it had been announced.