The Education Ministry was last night urged to take immediate steps to ensure Bermuda's senior school students did not continue to lag way behind their peers in the United States in the three basic academic skills.

Shadow Education Minister Tim Smith said this year's TerraNova test results for secondary school pupils were "mediocre at best, and, in places, appalling".

He spoke out after chief education officer Dr. Joseph Christopher released the test results on Friday, which showed that, while primary students were performing at or above the norm, middle and senior children were falling way behind in maths, language and reading.

The Royal Gazette revealed on Saturday how senior two students were three years behind their counterparts in the States in maths, two years' behind in language and more than two years' behind in reading.

Senior one students were more than two years' off the progress of their peers in maths, and more than one year behind in both language and reading.

"I believe Government is putting a glossy coating on test results that reveal a system that is failing our children," said Mr. Smith.

"I hate to say it, but we appear to be making failure an option for our children and I don't think that's good.

"The Minister of Education should be embarrassed and ashamed of these results. The Minister should commit to improving the results and raising the bar.

"She should precisely tell the public what action is to be taken so children and parents can be reassured that something will be done."

When the results were released last week, Dr. Christopher said they proved that attempts to improve primary education had paid off, but said more focus would be give to middle and senior years.

However, he failed to explain how.

But Mr. Smith said he believed the results were more a measure of school, classroom and Government effectiveness than student ability.

"It makes little sense to talk about achievement at the primary level if students leave the system below grade level," he added. And he said the United Bermuda Party was eager to see students in Bermuda a year ahead of their US counterparts, and instead compared to children at the top schools in America, Britain and Canada.

General Secretary of the Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) Michael Charles said he was not surprised by the poor results in maths, but was a little surprised at the flagging marks in language and reading at the senior level.

However, he said he needed more detail on the test results to find out whether students had failed any particular areas of the exams.

"The figures show that we have a long way to go with our maths," said Mr. Charles.

"The results of the language and reading is a bit more of a disappointment. I don't know what the reason is for it. I was not expecting that. I don't know if it's a one off thing or something that is building up.

"We had a lot of work to do before, but now we have even more to do."

Mr. Charles said he had not spoken to the Ministry about the results as of yesterday, but said in order to make a good judgement, he needed more detail.

"It's a concern to me. This means we have got an awful lot of work to do," he said.

"But is it only certain parts of the rest that we are not doing well on, or is it more than that?

"Is there something that we are doing that brings down the final results. These are all things that need to be looked at. The results alone are not really good enough to tell us what we need to know."

He said in the US, questions had been raised about how they managed to come up with average TerraNova test scores when so many factors had to be considered, but he also admitted that students in America were not known to be the most academically skilled on the world stage.

And while Mr. Charles said it would be nice to be able to compare students in Bermuda with those in other countries, it would prove more difficult than it seemed.

"If we had to do comparisons with other countries, we would have to take the tests they have," added Mr. Charles.

"In order to be tested against the Germans or the Japanese, we would have to do another curriculum."

The Royal Gazette asked the Ministry yesterday to explain what action, if any, would be taken to improve senior school test scores, but no response was given.