Students who fail to make the grade at Berkeley Institute will be stopped from moving up to the next year group with their classmates in a bid to improve the school?s graduation rate.

Principal Michelle Simmons said yesterday that the school was dropping social promotion, whereby pupils automatically progress to the next school level each year, to ensure that youngsters were on track to graduate by the end of their Senior Four (S4) year.

And she revealed that 63 of the 91 students in S4 this year at Berkeley achieved the Bermuda School Certificate ? a graduation rate of just under 70 percent. Last year, the school?s graduation rate was 61 percent.

Mrs. Simmons told that ending social promotion would put pressure on students to perform.

?Our young people are very social beings,? she said. ?As long as they are with their friends... they get very comfortable and may be complacent. This will take away any complacency and it will light a fire under some of them.

?It may shake them up a bit and that?s okay. I?m here to make sure that children are learning. I think it will have an impact.?

The new system ? which students will be told about when they start the school term in the new Berkeley building on September 11 ? means each child will have to gain 26 credits at the end of every year, from S1 to S4, in order to move up a year.

Mrs. Simmons told : ?The Bermuda School Certificate requires students to earn 104 credits to graduate. Each year students need to get 26 credits.

?What this eliminates is kids going to the next level thinking they are on track to graduate when in fact they are not. We already do not allow students to go to the next level in a course if they haven?t passed it.

?This means that those students who start S4 will be on track to graduate. Instead of pretending that everyone in S4 is on track to graduate, we will in fact put some pressure on our students to realise: ?If I don?t get those 26, I?m not going to the next level.??

Mrs. Simmons hopes the new policy will also tackle the gender disparity at the school: 76 percent of the girls in S4 graduated this year, compared with just under 60 percent of the boys. ?We need to do something for our young men,? she said.

She added that she wanted to see every student go on to further education but admitted that all those working within the public school system needed to ?do a better job? to improve academic performance and help students choose a career path.

At least ten students from Berkeley?s 2006 graduating class have gone to overseas universities, with many more planning to attend Bermuda College.

?Everyone should have the idea in their minds that a high school diploma is just an entry level certificate,? said Mrs. Simmons.

?They should have it implanted in their heads: ?I must go on to further education.??

Education Minister Terry Lister has promised in the past to end social promotion. He could not be contacted for comment yesterday and it is not known whether CedarBridge Academy ? the Island?s other public secondary school ? will follow suit.

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