last year to reward good students with free Bermuda College tuition.

That's too bad, because it was a good idea which could have been a good incentive to students attending Berkeley Institute and CedarBridge Academy.

Based on his statements in today's paper, Sen. Scott's main reason for rejecting the idea was that it was proposed by Tim Smith, the Education Minister in the previous Government.

Mr. Smith proposed that any student who maintained a 95 percent attendance record, a B average and agreed to be drug tested could receive free tuition at the Bermuda College.

To some extent, Mr. Smith was preaching to the converted -- many students already doing those things out of choice would have benefited, but it also had the potential to turn a few other kids around and to keep them in school and send them on their way to further education.

Unfortunately, Sen. Scott, who first claimed not to remember the programme, believes College students are subsidised enough and there is no need to do any more to help students at the College.

The Government, when it was in Opposition, opposed the proposal and instead said the root causes of truancy needed to be determined. Nothing much seems to have been done in this area beyond budgeting for more truancy officers for the next school year -- evidently their job is to determine and fix the causes of truancy as well as bring students back to school.

NEXT TIME . . .

EDT Next time...

Today's Royal Gazette contains a 16-page supplement previewing the Cricket World Cup which begins today.

Bermuda, which could, and some would say should, be there, is missing. That is an example of how far Bermuda had fallen in the cricket world from the 1970s and early 1980s when it was close to the level of current Test nations Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe and World Cup entrants Scotland, Kenya and Bangladesh were barely on the map.

Since the debacle at the last ICC tournament in Malaysia, which was the culmination of a series of bad decisions and missed opportunities going back fore more than a decade, there has been some improvement in Bermuda's cricket structure. The youth programme is back on its feet, a regular series of internationals scheduled and the focus put firmly on one-day cricket.

El James, now a Government MP, deserves much of the credit for restoring some of the lustre to cricket, one of the few team sports where Bermuda has a real chance to shine.

Now the planning for the next ICC tournament and the next World Cup needs to begin in earnest if Bermuda is to have a chance to take on the best in the world. It would be a shame if another generation of cricketers was to miss the chance already denied to outstanding players of the past like the late Alma (Champ) Hunt and Clarence Parfitt.