Diallo Rabain, the Minister of Education, has said he is willing to talk to parents and teachers calling for a halt to controversial school changes.

The minister was responding to a pleas by St George’s Preparatory School’s PTA to pause disputed educational reforms.

Replying to an open letter from the PTA, Mr Rabain said: “Since engaging on the education reform journey in 2017, we have held hundreds of consultation, engagement, and socialisation meetings and received thousands of individual submissions from parents, educators, students and other community members. j

“Most consultation submissions and the ministry responses are published on our websites to support the transparency of our processes.

“I am encouraged that your PTA working group has reached out to offer to contribute to the ongoing process of education reform.

“I am pleased to confirm that several comments in your letter have been previously considered and are already part of the reform process and are positions with which we fully agree.

“However, other views would benefit from further dialogue to provide clarity and hopefully a shared understanding.

“I would like to meet with representatives of the PTA working group to discuss your letter and education reform in its totality.

“I am hopeful that we can hold a fruitful discussion after the Cup Match holiday, and I look forward to sitting with your representatives at that time.”

The minister’s statement came in the wake of the Government announcing all but three of Bermuda’s 18 public primary schools will be rescored to ensure that the right decision is being made on which ones to shut down.

The Government made the change after a tense town hall meeting last week in response to a suggestion by the West End Warriors, a pressure group fighting to keep West End Primary School open, that the scoring process for the school was flawed.

The minister’s offer follows a statement from the St George’s Preparatory School’s PTA stating: “We would like to reiterate and add our voices to the growing concerns from the community including the West End Warriors, about the primary school reform process which we feel has been illogical and deficient, and there must be a mutually agreed criteria and open process to move forward.

“We understand six persons including the Permanent Secretary of Education, the commissioner of education, comptroller of education, education facilities manager, the senior estate surveyor, department of parks, lands and buildings and a building manager of the Ministry of Public Works completed a tabletop exercise to make decisions that would transform the landscape of education in our island.

“These persons are not involved in the maintenance of St George’s Preparatory School and never spoke with representatives from St George’s Preparatory School for an understanding of the facility, the community involvement of our school, or any other of the ‘study factors’ used.

“To make critical decisions about the future of our children, school assessments needed to be rigorous and fair, must fundamentally rely on the stakeholders’ input, and at a minimum required a site visit.”

The PTA group called for there to be no closure without funding and infrastructure being put in place.

The spokesman added: “We agree that education reform including school closures, is a necessary endeavour.”