When Rosemary Tyrrell returned to Bermuda at the start of this year to take up the post of Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education, she saw a changed Island filled with foreign workers. She told reporter Sam Strangeways how her desire to see Bermudians steer their own ship is inspiring her to overhaul the public education system.

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Rosemary Tyrrell is not a woman who minces her words. She is very specific when asked what she thought had changed about Bermuda when she landed back on the Island in January to take up the top civil servant?s post in the Ministry of Education.

?It had a different face,? says the Permanent Secretary. ?When I left Bermuda, there were blacks, there were whites and there were Portuguese. And returning? Each year that I returned I saw more and more of a change. I saw Orientals. I saw Asians. To such a degree that I began to wonder ?why are they here??.?

The guest workers she refers to made up 28 percent of the workforce in 2004. Ms Tyrrell says that statistic makes her question why Bermudians are not filling crucial roles in industry and the service professions.

?I?m thinking ?where are we, why are we not able to fill them? Do we need to, in a deliberate way, think about this??.?

She warms to her theme: ?When I look at the international companies bringing in any number of people to serve in the executive positions, I tell you now we are an intelligent people, we ought to be able to chart our own course and our own destiny. We should be able to ?caretake? our own country and our own future.

?Clearly if we have a quarter of the workforce here (are guest workers) it means that we are not fully meeting that challenge. I don?t know any place that has that population and I think that at every level we need to allow all of our young people, all of our people who are our future to find their own niche in their country. No one must feel disenfranchised.?

For Ms Tyrrell the key question must be how to ensure Bermudians are able to perform jobs at the highest levels, thereby removing the need for so many expatriates.

But there is no easy answer. With the joint graduation rate for the Island?s two senior schools at just 53 percent last year, she surely faces a potential uphill struggle.

Ms Tyrell readily admits that she is not happy with the current state of education. ?Anything short of 100 percent is disturbing to me,? she says. ?Everyone should leave school with something. Clearly, if we are not satisfied with the way things are going with the graduation rates it says to us as a ministry that we have to change.

?We can?t keep doing things as we have been. Our greatest challenge is to identify those changes that need to be made and be more deliberate in making those changes. I don?t think that anybody is satisfied with the end result. We work together to sort that out.?

She says she doesn?t yet know this year?s graduation rate but believes it is an improvement. And she feels she has already started to effect change.

Last week, she held a one-day conference for educators to tell them about a new three-year education strategy for the Island: Catch the Vision, Share the Vision, Live the Vision.

And she reveals that it was up to her to step in when Ministry negotiations on pay and conditions with the Bermuda Union of Teachers reached a deadlock in June and strike action was threatened. ?It was less than acceptable to me,? she says. ?I think that I?m the last person that should step in and when I did, I invited Mr. (Mike) Charles (BUT general secretary) to sit with me and talk.

?It?s not really the position of the PS to be on the negotiating table. I?m there now because of the nature of the way things have been done.

?I?m reluctant to question the dynamics of how unions operate but I do know that I want a different dynamic ? one where we can meet together.?

She thinks that has now been achieved though admits there are outstanding issues which need ironing out. ?What we are trying to do at this point is to meet with the union and put all the things for negotiation on the table one time and put that behind us. I feel very confident that we will not be deadlocked but that we can find common ground and resolve those issues.?

Ms Tyrrell, while admitting that some at the Ministry have viewed her as a new broom and have resisted her plans for change, clearly sees herself as a conciliatory force.

She tells how she stepped in when CedarBridge Academy teachers stopped working after a suspended student was allowed back into the classroom on appeal in March.

?I went up there to get a sense of what was happening and when I realised that they wanted an audience with somebody from the Ministry I said ?hey, I?m here?,? she explains.

?I did speak with the teachers and it was a very healthy dialogue. We were able to resolve it in a manner that was satisfying to everyone.?

Ms Tyrrell won?t comment on claims that Chief Education Officer Dr. Joseph Christopher, a stalwart of the Ministry, refused to talk with teachers.

Ms Tyrrell is a product, in part, of the public education system herself. She attended a public elementary school, Northlands, and then Whitney Institute, as well as the private Seventh-day Adventist school, Bermuda Institute.

After gaining her first degree in Jamaica, she returned to Bermuda Institute to teach for five years. She then did a Masters degree in the US before joining Warwick Secondary School as a history teacher, under then-principal Randy Horton, now Minister of the Environment.

A stint in England at a comprehensive school as part of a teacher-exchange programme came next, followed by a return to Warwick and an invitation to chair the Island?s history curriculum committee.

Mr. Horton proved a big inspiration to the young teacher. Ms Tyrrell says: ?He encouraged us to be creative, to be visionary, to move ahead. We didn?t have a whole lot of problems. What we had was a team effort. It became a situation where we socialised on weekends together.

?Mr. Horton would have parties at his house and invite us all. When teachers work together, students catch the spirit and they become a part of that support. We had a very, very successful programme I felt for the six years that I was at Warwick Secondary School.

?I left was because Mr. Horton left. It was a terrible experience for a few months. A new administrator came on board and it was about that time that I became restless.?

Her itchy feet took her back to Bermuda Institute, this time as principal. After five years she was invited by the school?s parent organisation, the Atlantic Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to move to the States as its associate director of education, deciding on curriculum content for some 70 schools.

Six years later, another promotion was offered and she became director of education, one of the church?s nine directors of education in the US.

?I was the only female director and the only black director,? she says. ?I had to represent all the minority groups. That was really a wonderful challenge.?

In 2005 she decided she?needed to come home?.

?I was not going to become a citizen of the US,? she explains. ?Bermuda was calling me. I had always intended to come back to serve in whatever capacity.?

Now she is back, she is intent, she says, on getting everyone to take responsibility for Bermuda?s next generation of leaders.

A suggestion that recent gang violence on the Island might be partly attributed to the creation of the two so-called ?super schools? is met with annoyance.

?I would think that gang violence on the Island says that parents need to be challenged to be more focused on their children,? she argues. ?What part does the rest of society play?

?There was a time when we really believed that it took a village to raise a child. Now it?s just a statement. If people can apportion blame and point fingers it?s easier than being responsible.

?I want to redevelop the village concept. It?s there that we will find a solution to some of these perplexing challenges that we have.?

She will concede, however, that the controversial changes to the school system, made in 1997, had their consequences.

?Competition was lost. When you have a number of schools out there everyone wants to consider his the best. There was this wonderful, friendly competition. That was lost with the larger schools but all does not have to be lost.?

She adds: ?I think large schools have their merits and they can work. A lot of thought needs to go into how they can work effectively.?

She claims it is unfair that CedarBridge ? the Island?s largest public school with 850-plus students ? takes so much public flak for the bad behaviour of a handful of pupils.

And she says she was more than happy with the way pupils evacuated the school after a bomb scare in April. ?I got there to observe those kids and I was so proud of them standing there on the playing field.

?To me, that?s what the story should have been about. Is there no good news from CedarBridge that the media can see? These are good kids at CedarBridge. I think they are blown up out of proportion a lot of times.?

She blasts claims made by anonymous teachers in June that the school?s graduation figures were ?bumped up?, at the behest of Ministry officials.

?I can categorically say that didn?t happen from this Ministry. I know that it didn?t happen.?

There can be no doubt that her first eight months in the job have been challenging.

She has had to tackle everything from wildcat strikes in schools to harsh criticism of public education by Government backbencher Renee Webb to a change in Education Minister as part of last week?s Cabinet reshuffle. But Ms Tyrrell exudes confidence and it?s hard to imagine anything ruffling her feathers. She firmly believes she can gain public confidence in the Bermuda School Certificate and Terra Nova tests and wants to see parents give teachers the support they require.

?They do no good service to society or to their children when they object to their children being disciplined. If we are going to develop responsible citizens we need to focus on discipline.

?We are constantly reviewing and encouraging more effective methods of discipline. Teachers need to feel empowered.?

And she wants to see more of a focus on careers in schools. ?I would like to sort of be more deliberate in the tracking of areas where we have needs in our community. ?I think that education needs to be more deliberate in identifying where those needs are and in a more deliberate way put programmes in place that will allow us to meet those needs.?

Ms Tyrrell does not have children but insists that if she did they would be in the public school system. ?If I?m a part of something it has to operate from a perspective of ?I believe it first?,? she says.

?My commitment is to excellence because every child is mine. I have begun to go to the schools and talk to the children about who they are and why it?s important for them to succeed and the kinds of models and examples that have emerged out of their schools. The future is theirs because they are the future leaders.?