Health and safety inadequacies are not limited to the island’s public primary schools and exist at all levels in the public school system, according to the Bermuda Union of Teachers.

Mike Charles, the union’s secretary-general, spoke after Tuesday night’s demonstration that involved about 50 teachers taking to the roadsides to raise awareness about the poor condition of school buildings.

The School Reorganisation [Score] report into Bermuda’s primary schools released by the Ministry of Education in February highlighted a number of problems at primary level, from rats and termites to leaky roofs and mould.

Mr Charles told The Royal Gazette: “This demonstration was part of a long and ongoing campaign to bring awareness to the deplorable conditions of our schools.

“There are problems everywhere at all levels in the public school system — there are water problems, leaking problems, mould …”

Mr Charles specifically made mention of issues communicated to him by staff at T.N. Tatem, CedarBridge and Sandys Secondary Middle School. Wayne Scott, the Minister of Education, said it was the Bermuda Government’s intention to address all of these issues throughout the system.

“We are being proactive and getting a lot of this stuff done and will provide an update as we have more information,” he said.

Mr Charles also accused the Government of inaction in terms of getting the work done, saying he had heard nothing from Mr Scott since the minister visited the island’s 18 primary schools on the release of the Score report, along with representatives from the Department of Works and Engineering.

“Since that visit there has been absolute silence until last night, when he appeared on TV just because of the demonstrations. He did promise to come back to us with a plan of action for remediating those buildings. That never took place. We had hoped it would be soon but maybe we were naive.

“If there is a major issue at a school that needs to wait until the summer, just tell us. We have been bringing it to the attention of the ministry and we get the same story every time, ‘Well, you know we have to work with Works and Engineering’.

“We don’t work for Works and Engineering so we can’t go to them — the ministry is our employer. This game has been played for years.”

Mr Scott said: “We are immediately addressing the serious health and safety concerns and putting together a plan with Works and Engineering to deal with the rest.

“Once a schedule gets finalised my intention is to make that schedule public so all of Bermuda can be aware of what the plan is and the timeline.

“Some of the immediate concerns have been addressed. There are other things we cannot do until school is out.

“Some schools have problems with vermin and there maybe instances where we may need to tent a whole facility and we can’t do that while school is in.

“We have another meeting on Friday we have been meeting on a regular basis, so my hope would be [to go public] soon.”

Lovitta Foggo, the Shadow Minister of Education, called on the One Bermuda Alliance to “put their money where their mouth is” by allocating more money to education.

“They have consistently lowered the budget for education each fiscal year they have been in office, while academic results have not improved and conditions at our schools have been allowed to worsen. This demonstrates that education is not a top priority for the OBA.

“At the start of the school year, the OBA declared that Bermuda’s public schools were in good stead and ready for operation, yet the facts bear out differently.

“Schools still have hurricane damage from two years ago. Many schools are faced with rodents, roaches and mould. The perennial issue of resources remains unaddressed.

“The system has once again been faced with a budget that does not even begin to allow principals and their teachers to fix the issues.”