Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, the saying goes, and Renee Webb certainly seems to be out to prove it.

The former Tourism and Telecommunications Minister laid into her Government again on Monday night, this time concerning education.

She said the Education Ministry ? and teachers ? were failing the Island's public school students and argued that Government need look no further than the private sector to see how schools should be run, instead of taking expensive trips all over the world to look at other programmes.

Government is quite used to taking this kind of criticism from the Opposition and other outside commentators, but when it comes from one of the Government's own backbenchers, it carries a real sting.

This is not the first time Ms Webb has criticised the Government since she dramatically left the Cabinet two years ago. And Premier Alex Scott is learning what other past Premiers already know ? that there is nothing worse than a discontented back bench.

What should be of further concern to Mr. Scott is that Ms Webb is not alone in her criticisms. Julian Hall, whose silver tongue and quick mind ensure that he is heard, is a vocal critic. And former MP and Senator Reginald Burrows was highly critical of his own party's performance when he retired from politics.

What is notable about this is that the criticisms are coming from a wide cross-section of the party.

Mr. Hall is something of a maverick, but claims to represent the labour movement. Ms Webb sits mainly in the political centre, while Mr. Burrows was as conservative a politician as the PLP could contain.

All of that suggests a level of disunity and unhappiness with the current leadership of the party, and means that it would inevitably go into an Election as a divided force. To be sure, many of the differences would be papered over, but the longer a party remains in power, the more obvious the divisions are.

And nowhere are opinions more divided than on education. Improving educational performance can take much longer than, say, solving the housing problem, where the solution is obvious ? build more homes ? even if the execution of that solution can be more complicated.

But in education, everyone is an expert and everyone has different expectations of what schools should be doing.

Worse, while improvements can be made from year to year, one arguably must wait to see how today's five-year-olds have performed in 13 years time when they graduate to get a true measure of improvement, or the lack thereof. Even reforms like the reduction in class sizes in primary school infants departments introduced by then-Premier Jennifer Smith in 1998, take time to show results, although they should be measurable by now.

But, as both Ms Webb and Shadow Education Minister Neville Darrell showed in Monday's debate, there has been virtually no improvement in standards since the mid-1990s, since which time millions of dollars have been spent.

Ms Webb was wrong to lay the blame entirely at the feet of teachers, who have predictably squealed. It would also be wrong to say they are not to blame at all. It's just that it can be shared with the various Ministers who have filled the portfolio, the civil servants in the ever expanding Department of Education and the community at large.

But at least there is now some public recognition on both sides of the House that much more need to be done to make education work.