Shadow Education Minister Tim Smith has joined educators around Bermuda in calling on Government to provide an alternative school for extremely badly behaved pupils.

In the House of Assembly on Friday night, he said the time had come for Government to address the issue of unruly students with some urgency, and he said they should begin by allowing headteachers to expel children from their classrooms.

His comments came a week after the entire staff at Bermuda's largest public school, CedarBridge Academy, refused to conduct lessons due to increasing bad behaviour, which some have described as verging on the criminal.

Mr. Smith said the majority of children on the Island - those that wanted to work - were losing out to the few who continued to disrupt lessons and made teaching virtually impossible.

He said: "We have not heard the Government's position on that (alternative school).

"I would beg the minister to make her comments in due time, but I think there has to be an acceptance that teachers are emotionally and physically exhausted."

He said teachers were not exhausted by the children who wanted to learn, but by those students who plainly did not want to learn, and, more over, wanted to make learning impossible for everyone else.

The shadow minister said it was time that a Code of Conduct was put together with some urgency to offer guidelines to schools on how to sanction unruly pupils, but he said they must be able to take a hard line on bad behaviour.

He added: "We have had in the past a CADET (alternative) programme, it began at Warwick Camp site, and I believe the original plan is workable.

"But the CADET programme as it is today is understaffed and under-resourced.

Education Minister Paula Cox replied by explaining she had missed part of the session in the House of Assembly because she had been involved in the interviews and selection of Rhodes scholars, adding she had been impressed with the academic ability and quality of candidates from the public education system.

Ms Cox said on Thursday night she had met with 200 to 300 people at a meeting about proposals to provide a new special needs facility on the Island for those children whose parents felt they could not function well in a mainstream school.

And she said the issue of an alternative school for badly behaved children was also being discussed, but said there was a need for considerably more discussion and consultation on both issues before any statements or decisions could be made.

The minister said it would be "premature" for her to give a "knee-jerk reaction" to the discipline problems.

She said a stakeholders committee was set up in June this year, following a demonstration by concerned teachers, and part of its mandate was to look at discipline and the drafting of a Code of Conduct for all schools.

And she said teachers at CedarBridge Academy, along with the school board and administration, had been writing their own proposals on how to tackle the issue of poor behaviour in their classrooms.

She said teachers at CedarBridge had written a paper to the ministry identifying a number of issues and suggesting ways they could be tackled.

And she said those issues were being considered by the school and the ministry, and both the issues of the special needs school and discipline sanctions were "coalescing".

Ms Cox said of the teachers: "There were also thinking `what can we do better to sharpen the sword'.