Last week’s shocking statistics which showed more than half of Bermuda’s final year students in 2006 failed to graduate have sparked calls for widespread reform. One educator not surprised by the figures is MP Ashfield DeVent. In an interview conducted by Matthew Taylor before the announcement, Mr. DeVent spelled out the stark situation facing Bermuda. Like a drug addict taking their first steps to recovery, Bermuda needs to admit to its chronic education problem says MP Ashfield DeVent — before it causes more destruction.

Ironically Mr. DeVent, who was thrown into Cabinet to finish off of the new Berkeley project, blames part of the problem on mega-schools which have left students lost as standards across the board plummet.

After being sacked by former Premier Alex Scott, Mr. DeVent is now working as the Programme Director of CARE — Children and Adults Reaching for Education — which helps those who missed out at high school get their GEDs.

“Why are people coming here? Because something is lacking in the school system,” he said. “And not just public — we get students who went to private school. Somehow education is not grabbing the attention of young people.”

There are many reasons.

“Bermuda as a society has lowered a lot of its standards for one,” Mr. DeVent suggested.

“Young people only do as well as the expectations placed upon them by parents, teachers and the school system and society.

“Because of our affluence, people, parents, society tend to think you can fix all your problems with money. So if my child is not doing well in this school, I will pay and put them in private school.

“I can pay for them to work hard — give them a big gift for Christmas and say ‘do better next term’. We need some real expectations — to demand they produce at a certain level.”

Parents need to get involved, he added. “They send them off to school and think that is it.”

The 49-year-old studied at Prospect Primary and Warwick Academy but he credits Tankard’s nursery with giving him a great start.

“When I left nursery school I knew my times tables — at aged five or six. We knew them well, we learned by sing-song.

“I might not have even known what they meant, they were drilled into your head, so later on when you needed to know five time six it was there.”

“In those days, rules were known and enforced and parents supported those rules.

“Now you hear of parents who go to schools and immediately take the side of their child and go on the attack as opposed to defending the situation and adult in regard to what is expected.”

There is now a creeping lack of competitiveness amongst youngsters which he blamed on affluence.

“Affluence is a great thing but it comes with its consequences,” Mr. DeVent said.

“Bermuda is a place where in the past you could live quite comfortably not having had full education — taxi drivers and tradesmen lived quite well. In isolation that served us.

“But as the world becomes a smaller place and the competition more intense, it’s no longer the case.

“We have been living comfortably without competition, now competition is upon us we are almost afraid of it. We don’t realise unless we take the bull by the horns and compete at the highest level we are going to be left behind.

“We see it in sport as well. The move to super-schools, these senior high schools, that has affected it as well.”

Smaller high schools had stoked healthy competition, he believes, especially in events like athletics.

“You had Berkeley, Warwick Academy, Sandys Sec and it was really competitive. The school that won last year everyone was gunning to defeat the next year.

“With everyone in one school, now two, some of that competitive edge has been knocked aside and lost.”

It needs firm action now, said Mr. DeVent.

“We are on the right track. This Premier has come out and said openly that public education is sick and needs to be totally looked at.

“Politically both this government and the former government ministers tended to shy away from admitting there was a serious problem.

“I think like anything — drug abuse or family problems — the first step is to say: ‘Hi my name is Bermuda and we have an education problem’.

“To say it first, and completely admit and say ‘I have some responsibilities’ — teachers you certainly have some responsibility, the Board of Education and Government you definitely have some responsibility, parents and students you have some responsibility.

“First of all, admit we have this problem, everyone has some responsibility and then get serious about attacking that problem. That’s a great step.”

Mr. DeVent called this newspaper after the dismal graduation numbers were announced to say he was pleased new Education Minister Randy Horton was being honest about the depth of the problem.

“I am glad to see the new minister has admitted it too. Ministers of Education generally, no matter what side they are on, don’t want to tell the truth, don’t want to say the system is bad because it reflects on them.

“This is the first time I can remember the Minister has come out and said: ‘We are in bad shape.’”

But Mr. DeVent said there was plenty of blame to be shared.

“A big piece of it will have to start in the home,” he said. “Parents need a firmer grip of what’s going on with their children.”

Unsupervised, unsuitable TV and video games does nothing to stop the rot.

“Parents need to start out reading to their children.”

And take a real interest and intervene when things are going wrong.

“They can’t just send their children off and think everything will be all right.”

So many parents were unaware of how far their offspring were going wrong.

“These new schools, my perception, because of the size of these schools, it is very difficult for teachers to have a personal relationship and build that bond,” Mr. DeVent said.

“The perception of many students — whether it is right or wrong — is they are not cared about.”

Which of course begs the question why Mr. DeVent took on the jobs of finishing the new version of Berkeley — one of the large schools he now decries.

“I was responsible for finishing something that was already started, and in a whole lot of trouble for other reasons, at the point I took it over.”

Asked if CedarBridge with around 780 students and Berkeley with around 650 students were mistakes, he said: “From a cultural perspective, they were thrust upon us without a clear plan as to how to incorporate them into Bermuda society.

“Many will argue what we had before worked. Look at Cabinet and Government. Many of the people successful in the community are a product of the public school system — it had to have worked.”

But many of those who had succeeded in state schools wouldn’t dare drop their kids into their modern equivalent, said Mr. DeVent.

Should he not have refused the Berkeley job, given those views?

“It was going to be built,” he said. “It was there. They weren’t going to just leave it. My role — again collective responsibility — was to build it.”

He took a lot of stick for it and sacked contractors ProActive who were chosen by former Works Minister Alex Scott and championed by the Bermuda Industrial Union.

And then Mr. Scott sacked him.

As he now waits to get his political career back on track, he works trying to get students on the right lines after a school career of failure.

It’s a challenge, admits Mr. DeVent.

“Many are so far out of the loop they have lost any incentive,” he said.

People have to battle their own embarrassment.

“I have had students tell me, because of their shortcomings in reading, they act out rather than be exposed.

“If they think a teacher is going to ask them to read and the rest of the class will know they are not at the level they should be — rather than do that, one student told me he would start a fight.

“We need a smaller setting where both teachers and administrators can have a closer personal relationship with students — begin to make them get over that fear and then work with each student at their level.”

Getting them later on is not so easy he says of his 40-plus students, who range in age from teens right up to people in their 50s.

“We have successes and some people we have to chase down to come back,” he said.

“We have to go after them to encourage them, many come back and pass.

“Many students come here and I ask them ‘You appear to be able to do this, it’s not a lack of ability. What’s been the problem?’ Many say ‘Nobody cared about me’.”

Mr. DeVent, who has been at CARE since August, is there to show them someone cares now.

“I enjoy this job and I am seeing the results,” he said.

But a failure to fix Bermuda’s ailing education system will be disastrous, he added.

With its tiny geography, there will be no escaping the ghetto which will be created, said Mr. DeVent.

“You cannot escape to the suburbs of Connecticut and drive through the ghetto of New York. We are too close for that.”

Race problems have long been blamed on Bermuda’s uneven society.

Asked what was holding the young black male back today, he said: “Education is the key for anyone moving forward. If you can put your head down and do whatever you have to do, whether you are black or white, that’s the key.”