Commissioner Heatley To Host Parent Meetings
The Ministry of Education is inviting parents to attend a series of meetings with the Commissioner of Education, Dr. Edmond Heatley.
The Ministry has planned four meetings, the first will be held tomorrow [Oct 22] evening at West Pembroke Primary School at 7pm.
Dr. Heatley explained the purpose of the meeting, “Since arriving in Bermuda, I’ve had opportunities to meet with teachers and students. I had promised to meet with parents to provide a forum for them to openly share and provide feedback on the Bermuda Public School system.”
He added, “We need parents to be actively involved in our school system and at the same time the Ministry will continue to engage and provide support for our parents. Parents are an integral part of making an education system successful.”
The meeting schedule is as follows:
- Tuesday, 22 October – West Pembroke School
- Thursday, 24 October – T.N. Tatem Middle School
- Monday, November 4 – Sandys Middle School
- Thursday, November 7 – East End Primary School
All meetings will begin at 7.00pm. Dr. Heatley will make a presentation outlining the plans to improve the island’s schools, followed by a period for questions.
I will NOT be going!
I’m not interested. Anything short of firing the DOE hierarchy responsible for the last 20 yrs of mis-education won’t work. My kid will stay in private school while my tax dollars continue to be wasted on a broken down public system.
“Without a downward trend combined with an aggressive and effective negative campaign by an opposition party, maintaining the government could be easy for the PLP.”
In order to win the govt the OBA demonized the public school system… now they are using the same poor people’s taxes, to try and fix the reputation they destroyed….
For the past two years only 28% of the public senior school students who have sat the internationally recognized GCSEs have only manage to achieve passing grades of between A* to C. The absolute worst school in the UK recorded a 35% passing rate (for 2012, not sure about 2013 results). The average exam load for the students was between 1 and 3 apparently. Contrast that with the fact that local private school students who take anywhere from 6 to 10+ GCSEs during exam period.
So Rhonda, I will have to disagree with you on your comment. The reputation, unfortunately, is not totally inaccurate and the critics have not destroyed anything, but just studied the results. Not as bad some might say, but definitely shouldn’t be considered “thriving” as described by the last Education Minister prior to the 2007 election and just after the release of the abysmal 2012 exam results mentioned above.
The reason for the results can’t be placed on one group or another. At this point it can be considered a collective failure.
Prior to the 2012 election it should read
why do we have an American with no knowledge of are education system in charge
the GCSE don’t mean sh===t in the us
the sat scores is what they look at all these years both political parties have destroyed are education system
that why I by the grace of god will make sure my granddaughter goes to private school
Maybe an American can teach our kids the difference between OUR and ARE.
To assume private schools are without fault and that your child or grandchild will be a productive citizen as a result of them attending is very small minded. Although I went to a private school a few from my class did very little with their lives despite being given some of the best tools to succeed. I know of other “private school” children who are up for murder so the school doesnt make the person. If you think sending a child to private school is going to make them into a better person, I have a pair of Nikes I can give you to turn you into the next Michael Jordan.
And in order to win the govt. the PLP demonized… everything that isn’t PLP.
If you want to talk negative campaigns, let’s talk about the campaign you and others waged against ANYONE that didn’t toe the party line, posting outright lies and mistruths, insane amounts of misinformation and some of the nastiest smear I’ve ever seen.
Negative campaigning happened on both sides. You can’t tut-tut when you were doing the exact same thing.
……….@ Rhonda Neil – why are you such a drone, former Premier Paul Cox was a complete disaster and set the PLP back for 5-10 years with her aloof sophistication and inability to communicate and lead a team.
Her successor, MP Bean, although nice committed and trying hard does not have the gravitas to pull off a victory, so please come with something better than this sour grapes playground approach to challenging the OBA, they won because even the diehard PLP supporters realised the PLP was taking Bermuda no where, why didnt your Prize Dame Jennifer reform education to save the “Bermudians” she loved so much?
Get a grip Rhonda Neil and stop being so one dimensional listening to you guys on the radio is really tiring.
You lost, period.
Now go and raise some funds with bake sales and old school parties to pay your creditors, keep your lights on and get ready for your next leadership contest when MP Bean loses the next election, in 3 years time, or shorter when the PLP is at its weakest and unable to raise $800,000+ to fight a campaign.
All students will become adults.
All parents will become seniors.
Future adults will have to care for future seniors.
It therefore does not matter whether public or private.
We need to make sure all of our children get a good education.
Let’s all get on board and do everything we can to support all of our children. Otherwise there will be a lot of regret when parents become seniors. Perhaps worthy of thought also is that you never know who your children will marry!!
@ vote for me… exactly! Children are who they are no matter what system they are in. All need support. Private school students may have certain advantages. That is obvious but not every single one is bright and comes from stable homes. And not every single public school student is struggling. I know he is going to talk about accountability. I hope he acknowledges the students’ responsibilities! ! That is most important! If not, it doesn’t matter what school they attend. However, the school system does need serious attention especially at the top! Too much ‘stuff’ is going on.
My question is simple, yet probably impossible for the DOE to answer.
What is Warwick Academy doing that government schools are not?
WA is an excellent school, but it has one clear advantage over government schools: it can (and does) select its students. Government schools cannot; they have to accept any student. So government schools get a disproportionate number of kids with learning delays, and WA tends to get a disproportionate number of brighter kids.
That does not excuse the deficiencies in government-provided education, but it does help explain why government education is always going to be more expensive, and will always have less impressive academic results.
The thing that I think is very important is to make sure that all children in the government system get the learning support they need. If they have learning delays, and they need special help, they have to get it.