Parents have not lost the right to stay informed about changes in their schools, according to education minister Wayne Scott.

However, Mr Scott stressed that the ultimate decision lies with the ministry itself, and that consultation was not the same as asking parents for permission.

“The format for everything that we are looking at is ‘children first’ — what’s ultimately in the best interests of the child, not the adults,” Mr Scott said.

He acknowledged that the goal of restructuring the Island’s school system had led to anxiety for some parents, but said no decisions had been made.

“The goal is in January to get this information out to the public and have a further consultation of approximately six weeks or so.

“All of this information will then be considered with a goal of having a final decision in place by the end of March. Any decision will be made under the premise of the best interests of our children.

“They are the beneficiaries of our best, and they are the ones that reap the consequences when we are not giving them the best.”

The ministry is at present involved in court proceedings with the Bermuda Parent Teacher Student Association (BPTSA), which Mr Scott could not comment upon.

At a meeting earlier this week, the BPTSA’s chairman, Harry Matthie, charged that amendments made to education legislation had effectively deprived parents of their say.

Mr Scott said that the creation of Parent Councils, which exist in tandem with Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs), were aimed at “legislatively empowering parents”.

“It is based on best practices in other jurisdictions, and it creates a legislative requirement for consultation,” he said.

“There have been suggestions that since we have PTAs in place, why don’t we use those. But PTAs are, by definition, charities. We can’t legislate a charity with specific duties under the Act.”

He characterised a PTA as primarily concerned with traditional activities such as fundraising, while Parent Councils would involve parents in deeper issues such as how funds are spent, or the desired quality of a principal.

“You can actually have the same people involved with both,” he said. “There is another level of that, with the Parental Involvement Committee. Outcomes are better when you have parents, and parents could probably do a better job figuring out how to get that involvement than the school system can.”

The emphasis on parental involvement can be traced back to a 2012 case in which Chief Justice Ian Kawaley blocked two principal transfers which had been announced without informing PTAs.

In that ruling, Mr Justice Kawaley wrote: “Consultation means simply that. It does not mean that the relevant decision could not have been made over the PTA’s objections or that the PTAs had to become formally involved in any contractual collective bargaining procedures. Rather, it required them to be involved in the decision-making process in some way which was consistent with their promised role as part of the collective team responsible for managing the relevant schools.”

Mr Scott described education as a topic where people were bound to differ.

“Everybody has a view on education. Everybody’s been to school; everybody has an opinion. You want to give consultation, look at the facts and make a decision based on all of that. We’ve been having a conversation on this for decades. We should be demanding that we do something different.”

While he agreed with the Opposition’s proposal for more STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education, Mr Scott said bringing in more STEM programmes was under way.

“There’s no question that we need to have a better focus on that,” he said.

Mr Scott did not support the Progressive Labour Party’s proposal to do away with middle schools.

“If you are not providing excellence to your children, it does not matter if you have a two-tier, three-tier or ten-tier system,” he said.

“When I first became minister and asked a group of student leaders from CedarBridge Academy and the Berkeley Institute about the right things a minister could do, their response to me was: stop social promotion, don’t dumb it down — give us a high bar to reach.”