The Bermuda Education Network has established a strategy with Northlands Primary to help facilitate and raise funds for free after school programmes and other learning enrichment activities.

The association of independent organisations is adding Northlands to an existing programme at Prospect Primary School as well as separate programmes run at Cedarbridge Academy and Berkeley Institute students.

Those being offered to the public schools include sailing, art, science and math while a new programme has been launched at Northlands covering critical thinking, science, current affairs and sport.

BEN also runs an expeditionary programme that invites students to participate in monthly expeditions.

A recent nature and heritage expedition was held in partnership with the Bermuda National Trust at Spittal Pond and involved volunteers by the Bermuda Police Force’s Community Action Team.

Funds are raised by BEN through donations from the business sector.

BEN executive director Becky Ausenda said: “We recently started working with a great principal Charles Joynes at Northlands and he supports our goals of connecting the children to as many experiences as possible. We are spending $12,000 at Prospect this year and $14,000 at Northlands so far and we expect those amounts to increase.

“Sailing has been a very successful part of what we can offer. Art is an important element — we have helped Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation to connect with Prospect Primary and they are now providing every school year with art lessons each week.

“BUEI is another key partner – we take a group.

“Sometimes access is the biggest issue the opportunities are out there but we need to do a better job of connecting children to those opportunities.”

On a separate note, BEN has recently taken on a team of four volunteers to add to its base of around 20 to help run the operations focusing on fundraising (Manish Thareja), sailing (Jessica Rowe), compliance (Kim Preston-Nisbett) and mentoring (Gloris Dill). Ms Ausenda said that there was a public consultation on community involvement in schools and it raised questions about the need for primary schools to have their own governing boards and said it hoped to assist any schools considering exploring that option.

“What we are looking for as a benefit of governing boards is potentially more influence on the hiring processes at the school level.

“Things like involuntary transfers would not be possible without the involvement or consultation with the governing board.

“The reason is, it is very clear that Bermuda’s top heavy education system is not managing to cater for all of the students in the system.

“Students who are lagging behind are sometimes not receiving the interventions that they need and as a community we really need to pay close attention to those kinds of gaps.

“How can we put ourselves in a position where the parents have someone they can trust who will hold the school accountable for making sure that kids are not falling through the cracks.

“We are trying to work with school leaders who share our vision of more independence and autonomy for their schools and problem solving at the school level.”