Government is to push ahead with a radical overhaul of the school system to decentralise education and place more power in the hands of principals.

Members of the reform team responsible for implementing the ten recommendations of the Hopkins Report yesterday asked the community to embrace 'cluster boards' - the new governing bodies for federations of schools.

According to the education experts, these boards will give the community more power over their children's schooling, with principals given more authority to appoint staff and set budgets, and each board representative accountable for exam results in their cluster.

The boards - part of the overhaul of Bermuda's public education system - could be in place by September, pending approval of amendments to the 1996 Education Act, to be tabled in the House of Assembly in July.

Yesterday, just over a year since the damning Hopkins Report which described the Island's schools as on the "brink of meltdown", The Royal Gazette met with UK education expert Professor David Hopkins, Education Minister Randolph Horton, Consultant Executive Officer Dr. Henry Johnson, Philip Butterfield, Interim Executive Board chairman and Bank of Bermuda CEO, and Darren Johnston, leader of the Medium Term Development team.

Mr. Johnston's team has been responsible for drafting the cluster board model and he said one of the most significant changes will be in the way the Education budget is allocated.

"The finance process will be a bottom-up process, starting with the principals and working through the cluster boards," said Mr. Johnston.

The boards will make recommendations to the Education Board, to be passed on to the Minister, and Mr. Johnston said this could lead to "synergy" - with schools clubbing together to make the best use of resources, all resulting in a "smarter" use of money.

"We have checks and balances to make sure the capital allocations are fair and adequate," he added.

Education Minister Mr. Horton said: "This is a very significant change from what is happening today where schools are given a number of dollars to operate. These budgets are from the root up.

"It will not mean more money. It is not raising the budget but using it more effectively."

He added it had not yet been decided whether cluster board members would be paid but that he felt "on the main (Education) Board in particular there should be some compensation (for their time)".

Mr. Horton said: "The cluster board builds on the 'family of schools' concept.

"It will increase the level of autonomy for schools as well as accountability. Principals will have more say in what they're doing, with increased authority. They will be more involved in the selection of staff and the budgetary process, as well as in the operation and management of the school.

"They will also be more involved in the supervision and instruction of staff to ensure appropriate teaching and learning is in place. This is about the sharing of best practice to help us move towards the improvement of teaching and learning. It is benefiting from the experience already there and bringing it across the system."

Some of this best practice will be taken from the Island's four aided schools, whose governing boards were held up in the Hopkins Report as an example for the rest of the Bermuda to follow, in terms of their autonomy in appointing staff and school maintenance.

Why then has there been such a U-turn as to disband these governing bodies - appointed by school trustees?

Prof. Hopkins, whose review team last year recommended a "radical overhaul" of the Education Ministry, explained: "The proposal came from our recommendations last year. There were a number of reasons why we went down this route. The first is that in all high-performing school systems there is a move now to putting authority much closer to where the action is, and higher degrees of autonomy seem to correlate highly with better students outcomes.

"We were very concerned about the power and authority of the Ministry of Education, which we felt was dysfunctional in terms of its operation and power over the schools. We wanted to re-balance that. This is an antidote to a rather more paternalistic system of education.

"We also felt there was a need for a much higher degree of accountability. In high-performing schools we found a balancing between accountability on the one hand and autonomy on the other. It leads to a much better approach."

Prof. Hopkins added: "We were very strong in pointing towards clusters but also we were particularly concerned these clusters should focus around the middle schools and primary schools. One of the education outcomes of the review was there was a lack of continuity and alignment in provision across the schools, so we thought this was a very positive education proposal - to allow schools to plan their curriculum in a much more coherent way.

"There's also something about having a geographical aspect as well which brings out community support."

He said: "It is a significant structural challenge. But this particular organisational structure is fit for purpose in order to raise the standards of young people. It is tuned to deliver the education system its educational needs."

Mr. Johnston said: "The aided schools were flagged as an example to be built upon.

"If you go through the functions of the aided school boards and cluster boards, you will see the same responsibility for adapting the school vision to the overall vision, developing budgets, creating collaborative learning centres, risk and control, and making sure there's safety. All of these things you would expect the aided schools to do are still expected of the cluster board."

He said: "If you tip it all over on one side and have 26 boards and don't have a way of creating a unitary system, then we don't think that meets David Hopkins' recommendations."

Interim Executive Board chairman Mr. Butterfield admitted the aided school governing boards would be disbanded, saying: "The assumption is that the four aided boards would be subsumed into the cluster boards."

He said: "We are asking people to embrace change to get better results. We are asking people to broaden their perspective and to apply the success they've had in the aided concept and move it to the cluster concept.

"The cluster board concept is a call to a higher level of engagement from members of the community and to a higher collaboration within the education system.

"What Darren and his team have done is devise an over-arching Government approach that places that holistic oversight of education from pre-school through to the end of the middle, and that I think is the real story of the cluster board."

Mr. Johnston said: "We have asked the aided school boards to play a role - it isn't like we have a pre-selected army ready and we will then eliminate the aided school boards. The intent is to tap their leadership and guidance and to have them as part of the process."

He added the "legacies" of aided schools would be maintained through "programmes and events".

Cluster board representatives will also be held accountable as per the Hopkins Report's recommendations for bringing more transparency to the public school system.