The Ministry of Education can help to make its regulatory role so much more efficient if it would educate parents on the minimum standards of operations for schools. This could be done in a newsletter or manual distributed through schools to parents.

Recently, I tried to access clarification on the minimum number of assessed work that should make up a term's grade for a student and it took multiple phone calls, several telephone transfers and half a day's persistence to unearth an answer.

Clearly, lack of action on the ministry's part is aiding and abetting lazy teachers who think that a single assessed work should constitute a term's effort. In the meantime, the child goes off with a report that is not a true reflection of 12 to 13 weeks of their school life. Teachers must do better and the education minister/ministry should hold them to a higher standard.

If simple standards are not being measured, and met, how are we going to move forward with performance-based pay, or indeed be able to obtain proper empirical data to help students, teachers and, by extension, schools? What we need is less articulation of what should be done and more doing what ought to be.

I am, etc.,

Francine Richards