The three-year-old Institute for Talented Students will shortly be rebranded as the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth Bermuda, its founder Riquette Bonne-Smith announced yesterday.

?We are seeking a residential unit to welcome 250 to300 students from Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth for Summer School courses in Bermuda.?

Speaking at Hamilton Rotary Club?s lunch meeting, Ms Bonne-Smith said that ITS was inspired by and supported by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.

Students have to pass a qualifying test to enter the programme which now has over 100 students, 60 percent of whom are from the public school system.

Ms Bonne-Smith noted that half of Bermuda?s students, and three quarters of the white student population, attend private school ?maintaining an exclusivity that leaves them totally unaware of the lives of their fellows who attend public schools and who are mainly black?.

?This results more in divisiveness than diversity,?she continued. ?Differences are misguidedly emphasised and the focus on intellectual development loses its sharpness.?

She urged Bermuda?s private sector to ?mobilise and to take a stake in Bermuda education, to strengthen the concept of one Bermuda and to develop a model of an educational system which can serve the need of one society?.

?Education and talent development is the key to unlocking the potential of its people, its greatest resource, and for sustaining and furthering its success,? Ms Bonne-Smith continued.

And she went on to warn that inequality of opportunity was a major threat facing Bermuda.

?We could create a Monaco type development in Bermuda or add a thousand more insurance companies but without putting in place equal educational opportunities for the whole population, we will be no further ahead. We are a multicultural, multiracial society. We must embrace that fact.?

She called for a curriculum for all schools which is ?aimed at bringing the population together and to fulfill the goal of meeting the needs of a multiracial and multicultural island people living in a small community in a globalised world.?

She said: ?We are winning the race in the art of having. We must win the race in the art of knowledge.?

Expatriates from all points of the globe arriving in the island are far better educated than some of Bermuda?s talented youth and enter the insurance and reinsurance market and the financial and business services sector with those unequal opportunities,? Ms Bonne-Smith continued.?

?Immigration policies putting Bermudianisation first cannot stifle the demand for the free flow of intellectual talent the booming international business climate generates.?

And she said that inequality of wealth and opportunity were Bermuda?s main internal threats which could ?ultimately damage the island?.