Funding constraints have forced the Ministry of Education to trim the planned number of assistant directors by more than half.

The Ministry originally had 13 assistant directors' posts but will now decrease the number to six.

The Ministry of Education has a budget of $149.1 million — an increase of almost $6 million from the 2008/9 budget.

However a Ministry spokesman said: "Two of the assistant director posts are currently filled. Due to funding constraints we intend to only fill four of the unfilled posts at this time. In total we intend to have six of the posts filled."

The Ministry of Education has had seven Ministers as well as the current acting Minister, Kim Wilson, in the last ten years. The Ministry is undergoing huge change since the Hopkins Report in May 2007, which recommended a radical reform and an internal restructure.

There are now three directors' posts covering educational standards and accountability, business and academics.

Director of academics is Llewellyn Simmons. Wendy McDonell was the director of educational standards until she was promoted to education commissioner in July.

The 13 assistant director posts were meant to cover early childhood education to student services but were cut back to six — of which student services and human resources are filled.

Friday's Bermuda Sun included advertisements for an assistant director for senior schools and technical vocational programme, and an assistant director for curriculum and assessment.

Each post came with a salary of $135,361. Bermuda Union of Teachers' general secretary Mike Charles said he wasn't aware of funding constraints.

"These positions we've known about for a very long time now and as you can see the positions are not filled. I don't know when they are going to be filled.

"We had two directors and then we lost one [when] Wendy McDonell [was appointed education commissioner]. Now they are going back to look for another one. The assistant directors' positions have never been filled.

"If they can't get two directors, I don't know how they are going to get the other people. It's a fiasco really. I don't work at the Ministry but it must be frustrating for the people who work there. We try to work closely with them but we don't know who we're working with."

He continued: "It's just a nightmare trying to deal with the Ministry because you don't know who you're dealing with, who's responsible for what. Again we go back to accountability and performance.

"If this is any evidence of performance than you know it's really poor. All I can say and hope is that whatever they do, it's better than what they've done in the past. Whether they get more people or not get many more.

"I'd just like a better job to be done."

Shadow Education Minister Grant Gibbons said: "I think historically most people feel that the Ministry, or at least the Minister, has been accused of being large and bureaucratic. It surprised us a year or so ago when the Minister talked about making it more hierarchical and I think at the time we said that most organisations and businesses are going to a flatter, less layers, a leaner operation."

Dr. Gibbons said the new format seemed to be going away from the Hopkins recommendations and said the Ministry needs to look at what it takes to get the job done.

"Do we really need all of these posts some of which are filled and some of which aren't. I think there needs to be a broader audit of what's required to get the job done. There needs to be, and I don't think we've seen it yet, a radical reform.

"I think that for a long time we've said that we need to shift some of the focus from the Ministry to the school level."