Secretary of Education, sheds some light on her likely performance in what could be one of the most important Civil Service jobs in the next few years.

The challenge of improving literacy, improving teaching standards and negotiating thorny issues involving dozens of schools, 100 or so civil servants and hundreds of teachers would be a heavy one for most people -- clearly Mrs. Khaldun has not taken this job for the fun of it and it may be that she truly believes in the concept of public service.

To some extent, Mrs. Khaldun will be in the reverse position of past Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries in that Education Minister Sen. Milton Scott can claim more expertise in education than she can. However, if Sen. Scott sets policy and Mrs. Khaldun, the manager, implements it, then this may be a strong partnership.

Some of what Mrs. Khaldun has said gives reason for hope. There will be no more five-year plans -- the Education Ministry wasn't nicknamed the Kremlin for nothing -- and she intends to rely on the expertise of her civil servants and staff in the schools to get the job done. Putting responsibility in the hands of staff is good management -- assuming they produce.

Improving efficiency will be key for Mrs. Khaldun and she and her Minister could do worse than to devolve responsibility from the Department into the hands of school principals and their governing boards.

This could result in job cuts and savings at the Ministry level while principals would have to be held responsible for the performance of their schools; if results in literacy and other subjects do not improve, then the principal would have to go.

That is how the private sector is supposed to work -- the same should apply to the Education Ministry.

GOING WEST EDT Going west News that Bermuda is to get airline service from TWA's hub in St. Louis -- in addition to Delta's second flight from Atlanta -- means that tourism chiefs may at last be able to realise the dream of exploiting the southern and western US states.

This has long been an ambition of successive Tourism Ministers, but the low frequency of flights and the problems of cost have been major obstacles.

The challenge now for Minister David Allen -- who has now put two concrete successes on his CV in the space of about two weeks -- is to use the means (the flights) to achieve his ends (more visitors who stay longer).

While the additional flights should result in greater competition between the airlines and thus lower airfares, Bermuda still remains an expensive destination to reach.

And once visitors do arrive, they need to get value for money and a holiday which is truly different from those offered by the Island's rivals around the world.

The two-page advertisement in Tuesday's newspaper showed, symbolically anyway, that the hotel industry, union and Government are on the same page. Whether that symbol can be turned into substance remains to be seen.