Just weeks after the release of graduation figures showing that half of the Island’s public senior school students failed to graduate, the Island was rocked on Tuesday with the news that around 60 percent of the Island’s 16- to 25-year-olds do not have adequate literacy skills for a modern, knowledge-based society.

Whether it was by luck or deliberate spin, Education Minister Randy Horton released plans for a new literacy programme for primary and middle schools, that may do something to address the situation.

To be fair, the most recent study, which was extrapolated from a 2003 literacy study of all Bermuda residents, makes for more mixed reading than the headline figure suggested.

In many cases, young people performed well in one or more of the areas in which they were tested. And as literacy skills improved depending on the level of education, it was unclear whether the students with lower levels of attainment fell in the younger age brackets or were spread evenly throughout.

But the overall message was clear. Bermuda’s success as a society and as an economy in a globalised world depends on having a highly skilled workforce that can digest reasonably complex information quickly and make good decisions. This is true whether the worker is an insurance underwriter or a plumber.

Automation and the information technology revolution demands higher and more adaptable skills, and those who do not have them risk being condemned to an under class from which there is little prospect of escape.

In Bermuda, there has been a good deal of discussion about the wealth gap between whites and blacks, and more starkly, between Bermudians and non-Bermudians.

While there may be merit in the idea that discrimination or favouritism by some employers towards non-Bermudians has hurt Bermudians and black Bermudian in particular, the greater truth is that the dismal performance of the public education system in the last decade and more is creating an economic apartheid in which the upper and middle classes pay for their children to get a superior education and the poor are condemned to a sub-standard public education system.

The blame for this cannot be laid at the feet of the students (and, yes, there are some outstanding students in public schools), parents, teachers, education administrators or even the Government, although all should admit some of the responsibility for this crisis. The fact is that the entire community is to blame, and at this stage, it will take the whole community to fix it.

The programme announced by Mr. Horton on Tuesday promised teacher development, early intervention for students who were lagging behind, a home/school initiative to involve parents more and the placement of literacy coordinators in all schools. Most of those ideas make good sense, although some are so obvious that it is shocking they have not been in place for years.

The literacy study also produced two sets of results that confirmed the obvious. One is that literacy rates fell in inverse proportion to the amount of television watched, and the second showed literacy rose in proportion with the number of books in the home. A third correlation was more surprising: literacy rates were higher for people who had a computer at home, which goes against the conventional wisdom that teenagers who spend their lives playing computer games or instant messaging their friends are doomed to failure.

But this may have more to do with household income — assuming that wealthier households are more likely to have home computers — than with the machine itself.

Mr. Horton promised a comprehensive independent inquiry into education following the release of the graduation rates and this study gives added impetus for the need for it. Next week, Mr. Horton faces the possibility of more bad news when the Terra Nova results are released, although there may be little room there to go but up.

Regardless of that, the situation has reached such a crisis that this newspaper believes a Royal Commission is needed to look at the Island’s entire education system, including private, public and home schools and from pre-school to tertiary education. Only then will the community know where it stands and will mobilise to rescue the system.