On Becoming a Judge of the OECS

When your heart gives out, and you die ten times on the operating table, it is usually a good sign that it is time to retire from the practice of law.  That is what happened to me.

I can still remember Dr Terry Isaacs, Maggie’s gynaecologist, settling me onto his examination couch in Kingstown, St Vincent, with the words, “Well, Don, I’ll do my best, but you are the wrong gender, and I will be examining the wrong end.”  Terry was the only doctor I knew in St Vincent at the time, so my choices were limited.  He had been President of the Grenada Family Planning Association (from which island he originally hailed) at the same time as I had been President of the St Kitts-Nevis Family Planning Association back in the 1970s, and we met from time to time at Caribbean Family Planning Association regional conferences.

He listened on his stethoscope for a few minutes, then said, “Don, you have the heart rate of a teenage Somali long-distance runner.  That would be very good if you were a teenage Somali long-distance runner.  But, since you are a sedentary, middle-aged, West Indian lawyer, I think you should go to see a specialist.”  With that, he dispatched me to be examined by Geoff Massay in Barbados.

Geoff is a brilliant surgeon, and he undoubtedly saved my life.  I remember him intently reading the notes his nurse had made on a pad, then looking up and saying, “Your heart is beating only 45 times per minute.”

“Is that good or bad”, I asked.  He shook his head, “Lawyers and lizards, we always knew both of you required very little oxygen.”  He explained that was half what it should be.  His theory was that it had been slowing down over a long period of years, which is why I had learned to adapt to the reduced blood flow.

After that he put me on the operating table in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown and inserted my pacemaker.  He put it on the right hand side of my chest.  He said as he did so, “Not to worry, Don.  Usually with lawyers we find no heart at all.  At least you have one, even if it is on the wrong side.”

That is when I died and retired from law and went to heaven as a judge in St Vincent. 

Years later, Chief Justice Dennis Bryon told me of the shock he received when he got his first pay cheque as a judge in Antigua.  His two sons’ school fees in Barbados were more than the total amount of the judge’s pay cheque.  He had to bring them back home immediately.  In my case, my salary cheque for my first month as a judge in St Vincent did not cover Maggie and my wine bill at Gonsalves Liquors.  In our case, it was the liquor bill that was the shock.  It turns out that liquor is several times more expensive in St Vincent than it is in Anguilla.

The remuneration of an OECS judge has always been skimpy, compared to earnings in the private sector.  My salary cheque in St Vincent was only a few hundred dollars more than I used to pay one of my secretaries in Anguilla before I closed my law practice.  Conditions improved a few of years later when the Prime Ministers agreed with Chief Justice Dennis Byron’s request to double judges’ salaries.  I trust it has been doubled again.  They cannot continue to rely on a supply of half-dead lawyers being available to fill the bench of the Easter Caribbean Supreme Court.

After two and a half years in St Vincent, with spells in Grenada, St Lucia and Dominica, the Chief Justice moved me to Antigua.  There I was to spend another two and a half years, with spells in Nevis, St Kitts, Montserrat, Anguilla and Tortola.  The amount of work was overwhelming.  I remember asking the Chief Justice why he kept sending me to places where there was so much work to do.  His response was, “Don we are both Kittitians.  Kittitians really know how to cut cane.”  Which, I think, was his way of telling me not to be a wimp, but to soldier on.

I think I did well to survive doing the job for five years.  I was ready to go after four.  But, I hung on for five, because I had been told by head office in St Lucia that five years would ensure I got a pension, or at the very least a gratuity.  Four years’ service would not count.  Five years would be necessary for there to be a little reward at the end of the day.

After five years on the bench, I was completely exhausted.  I was dropping things and forgetting other things. I went to see the premier psychiatrist in Antigua, Dr James King.  I told him that I was very worried, as I was in the terminal stages of Alzheimers.  He asked me why I was seeing him if I already knew what my problem was.  I explained that I needed a second opinion.  I don’t still don’t know why he laughed so much.

He took pity on me and gave me an examination.  I had to answer a lot of questions and do various memory tricks.  At the end of it, he explained to me that I was not suffering from Alzheimers.  I was merely, he said, an aging obsessive-compulsive.  Apparently, when you are a young obsessive-compulsive that is not such a bad thing.  He explained that he would much rather have an obsessive-compulsive lawyer worrying over his clients’ legal problem than have one who laughed and relaxed all the time while mailing out his bills.

The problem with being an aging obsessive-compulsive is that your body cannot answer to all the demands it was able to handle in younger years.  The body begins to rebel when you decide to do two trials a day, and one hundred Chamber matters on Friday morning.  Since it takes two days to prepare for one day of Chamber matters, that means staying up to all hours of the night reading files and making notes about their contents.  One did that in between writing the judgments.  I managed it for the first few years, and then it became too much.

We were told we had to write our judgments within three months of the end of hearing a case.  For me, that was too long a period.  Every time I waited three months, it was a disaster.  I had to read every file and every note all over again.  Within a few days, I forgot that the trial had ever taken place, far less what had been said in it.  It was like I had never seen the witnesses nor heard the evidence.  I found I was better off writing every judgment within a day or two of the end of the trial.  According to Dr King, such panic at increasing forgetfulness was the natural result of an aging obsessive-compulsive believing that he could continue to bite off more than he could chew.

The doctor recommended that I take a long holiday.  What did he mean by a long holiday?  Six months, he suggested.  Needless to say, being an obsessive-compulsive, I applied for a year off.  To my astonishment, the Judicial and Legal Services Commission granted it.  On reflection, they must really have been glad to see my back.  So, we packed up the dogs and possessions, gave up the house in Antigua, and flew back to Anguilla to enjoy a year’s unpaid leave.

After six months resting, gardening, reacquainting myself with family and friends, I was thoroughly enjoying myself.  You can imagine what I did next.  I compulsively wrote to the acting Chief Justice, Adrian Saunders, submitting my resignation.  I realised I had had enough.  There was no way I was going back to that heavy burden of obsessively trying cases and worrying about the state of injustice in Antigua and Barbuda.

It would have been nice if there had been the promised gratuity at the end of it.  It turns out you have to work for at least ten years to expect to receive anything under the Pensions Act of Anguilla.  Or so our resident pensions expert of Anguilla, Marie Horsford, explained.  I did not fight it.  There was no client to pay my fees for going to court for the gratuity I had been promised.  I compulsively and immediately forgot about pension or gratuity.

Since then, I have been obsessively enjoying myself teaching CAPE law three half-days a week in the High School in Anguilla.  I have 18 students this year.  I fill in the spare time between classes providing a free legal aid clinic three half-days a week out of the Welfare Department.

I call it practising stress-free law.

Originally written for the OECS Bar Association, as its former Secretary during the period 1989-1999, for publication in its 20th anniversary commemorative magazine.  Subsequently delivered as an after-dinner speech to the Anguilla Bar Association.

To Be an OECS Judge

To Be a Judge in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Supreme Court

When you accepted this job, you were not being honoured for any merit on your part.  The truth is rather that, for your sins, you have been sentenced by the Chief Justice to a term of solitary confinement with hard labour.  Consider any little innocent relief that the country you serve in may afford you as time off for good behaviour.  Follow this rule, and you will not suffer any false expectations.

At the annual Armistice Day parade, when you stand in line behind the Governor and the Prime Minister, in front of the Bishop and the Leader of the Opposition, it is important to suppress that feeling that one must be a very important person.  It is not you that is important. It is the job that put you there.  And, it does not matter who is in front of you, or who is behind you.  You have no say on the question.  It is entirely in the control of the Protocol Department.  Let them do their job and worry about who has precedence, while you concentrate on doing yours.

When you go to the beach on a Sunday morning to have a swim, do not be surprised at the number of towels that soon get spread out around your position.  The sea-bathers will be very polite, perhaps excessively friendly to you.  You may not have any idea who they are, but from the time you hit the beach, every litigant for miles around will realise this is their chance to ingratiate themselves with you, and will make a bee line to your spot of beach.  Expect to see every one of them in the court before you on the Monday morning.  By all means be polite to citizens, but avoid friendliness and the development of social relationships.  You have not accepted this job to make friends, but to deliver blind and impartial justice to all who come before you, whether they swim or not.

When you are working at the case load you are given, be grateful that you are expected to be flawless and perfect.  Have no concern about making mistakes.  That is why there is the Court of Appeal.  They are the only ones who can decide that you made a mistake in law.  The Court of Appeal makes mistakes too.  That is why there is the Privy Council.

What you are expected to do is to impartially hear both parties to every case, and to deliver your decision one way or the other within a reasonable time, certainly not more than three months after the end of the case.  Lawyers and clients will appreciate prompt decision-making much more than they will appreciate your lengthy and laboured effort to produce perfect justice, especially if it delays your delivery by several months.

When your police orderly drives you in to work in the morning, it is not to make you feel important.  It is not for you to show off.  It is a simple device for ensuring that the judicial office is not brought into disrepute.  How can the citizen feel comfortable about you trying careless driving cases, when you are driving yourself and crashing into people and cars all over the country?  When he takes you effortlessly through security and immigration, it is not to emphasise your importance.  It is only that the powers that be consider that your judgments may be undermined in the eyes of the public if you are seen walking across the departure lounge in your socks, and buckling back up your trouser suit belt in public like everyone else.  It is just one of the aspects of the job.

On the point of the police, remember that your police orderly is not given the job for his good manners and polite behaviour.  In some of our islands, his principal responsibility is to fill out a report at the end of each day on anything useful that he may have overheard or noticed while driving you.  His promotion chances may depend on his providing titbits that his superiors may be able to use one day against you, if it ever becomes necessary.  Some police chiefs keep highly confidential files on judges, just as they do on politicians, merchants, and lawyers.  These Commissioner and their Superintendents never know when they might need the extra leverage.  So, be very careful how you conduct yourself in the presence of the police orderly.

When you enter the court room, and the lawyers bow down, with their foreheads nearly touching the polished bar table, keep in mind that it is not to you personally that they are bowing.  It is to the representation of the great seal of the State that hangs behind you on the wall of the court room that they are showing respect.  You appearance in the court room is no more than the trigger to set off a demonstration of loyalty to the high ideals of justice which your office represents.

When your orderly carries your bag out to the aeroplane and ushers you onto it before any of the other passengers are allowed to board, it is necessary to remind yourself that he is not pampering you.  What he is doing is to help you to carry work home.  The reason why the bag is so heavy is that it holds a lot of work you are supposed to be carrying home each and every evening.

While on the topic of aeroplanes, I hope I never hear that you have been demanding that you receive ‘your’ favourite seat.  As a judge, you have no right to any particular seat other than that awarded to you by the airline.  If you have no seat allocation, you board humbly like everyone else and gratefully accept any seat that is available.  Just hope the ‘plane takes off on time, and be thankful if your bag is on the same flight.

The VIP lounge at the airport, where you are sequestered before the flight is called, is not some place of privilege to which you are entitled access.  In my experience, the VIP lounge is used by your orderly to keep you safely confined until he can dispatch you out of his hands and onto the aeroplane.  If you go to an airport free of the custody of your orderly, use the departure lounge like everybody else, don’t demand access to the lounge like some Eastern despot.

One important matter I must touch on is the independence of the judiciary.  It really is quite remarkable that no Chief Justice, no Justice of Appeal, no judicial colleague will question you about your job, except on an appeal.  No one is looking over your shoulder, checking on what you are doing.  Always remember that this is not a privilege special to the judge.  It is not something you have earned, or have any right to.  As Chief Justice Sir Dennis Byron liked to remind his judges from time to time, it is a privilege that belongs to the citizen alone, certainly not to the judge.  It is fundamental to our system of justice that the citizen is entitled to be confident that his or her judge is delivering judgment without fear or favour, with prejudice to none.  The judge’s independence is his right and entitlement, not yours.

Finally, each of our islands has its charms, and its challenges. Some islands are coral and others are volcanic.  Some are mountainous and others are flat.  The people are universally friendly and polite.  Show courtesy and politeness back, and you will have no difficulty enjoying your period of service.  And, when after a few years it is all done, we look forward to your returning to us and re-joining the community of friends and colleagues whom you are leaving behind.

We bid you adieu and bonne chance.

A speech after a Bar Association dinner at my home in North Hill celebrating the appointment of my one-time partner, Birnie Stephenson, to be a Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, to serve in Dominica.

Constitutional Reform Brief

To:      A Politician

From: Don Mitchell

Date:  21 July 2009

The question you have asked me is, what in my view are some of the basic Constitutional improvements everyone in Anguilla wants to see?  What are the bare minimum reforms that are needed?  What are the checks and balances that we now know will help Anguilla to be better governed in the future?

I think it is generally agreed that we need to see two major changes:

1. Internal self-government.  No one is saying that Anguilla is ready for independence.  No one in Anguilla is asking for political independence at this time.  But, the old colonial regime has been discredited.  The United Nations has been saying for years that colonialism must come to an end.  The British government has been saying for years that it does not want any colonies.  It wants only self-governing overseas territories.  Anguilla has been paying her way in the world without financial assistance from the British government for years.  The British government has said that it wants a partnership relationship with us[1].  We are ready for partnership.  What does this mean?

(a) Public Service:  Appointments, promotions and disciplining of civil servants should no longer be in the personal control of the Governor.  Appointments, promotions and discipline should be on merit, and should be in the control of an independent, local group of respected members of the community appointed to the Civil Service Commission by the Governor.

(b) Teachers:  Appointments, promotions and disciplining of teachers should no longer be under the personal, uncontrolled discretion of the Governor.  Teachers should be handled by an independent Teachers' Commission.  Teachers should no longer be lumped together with civil servants.

(c) Police:  Appointments, promotions and terms of service of police officers should no longer be under the personal control of the Governor.  These should be handled by an independent Police Service Commission.

(d) Chairing Executive Committee:  It is time that the Executive Council be chaired by the Chief Minister or Premier.  The Premier must discuss business with the Governor and listen to his advice, but no one has elected the Governor to make decisions about the affairs of Anguilla.

(e) The Governor:  The Chief Minister and the Leader of the Opposition should be consulted on the appointment of a new Governor.  They should see the curriculum vitae of the proposed appointee.  We have a right to be consulted on the type of person they are sending to be Governor of Anguilla.

(f) Cabinet:  Increase the size of Executive Council [Cabinet]:  The number of Ministers should be increased to take account of the increased burden of government in the 21^st Century.  Four persons to run the affairs of this country is unrealistic.  With increased self-government, there will be an even greater burden on Ministers.  We need a Cabinet of at least six persons.  This way, we can get rid of the office of Parliamentary Secretary.  If we keep the Parliamentary Secretary, we must make sure the total can never again exceed fifty percent of the size of the House.

(g) Ex-Officio Members of Cabinet:  Let the ex-officio members, the Attorney-General and the Deputy Governor, remain in Cabinet to advise.  However, they should have no vote.  The elected members take the benefit and the blame of their decisions.  Nobody elected the ex-officio members.

(h) Governor's reserved powers:  The Governor must consult with the Chief Minister on the exercise of his reserved powers.  It is embarrassing for a responsible local government to have to learn about the actions of the Governor for the first time by hearing it on the radio.

(i) DPP:  The decision to prosecute somebody for a serious crime should not be in the hands of a member of Cabinet, such as the Attorney-General.  The Constitution must provide for an independent Director of Public Prosecutions who does not take orders or advice from any politician.

(g) Power to return a Bill to the House:  The Governor cannot continue to refuse to a Bill if he returns it to the House once, and the House considers his recommendations and sends it back to him.  The people's representatives take the credit and the blame for what laws are passed.  No one elected the Governor to decide what laws can pass for Anguilla.

(h) Power of disallowance.  At the moment, the Secretary of State can reject any Bill passed into law by the Anguilla House of Assembly, and assented to by the Governor.  He must never again have the power of disallowance of a Bill passed by the Anguilla House of Assembly, except in strictly limited situations, eg, where the Act will bring Britain in breach of some international obligation or Treaty.

(i) Mercy Committee: At present the Governor has sole discretion in exercising the prerogative of mercy.  He decides in private and on his own.  No one knows what criteria he applies.  He should act on the advice of an independent group of citizens who follow recognised rules of procedure.

(j) Anguillian status:  Anguillians have for generations traveled the world seeking to improve themselves.  There are thousands of Anguillians around the world who do not have British citizenship.  These persons are deprived of their belongership, though they are recognised by all Anguillians as being Anguillian.  By contrast, Anguillian status, or belongership, is granted when an alien becomes naturalised in Anguilla.  Naturalisation is controlled by the British Nationality Act, and is not recognised as an Anguillian procedure.  This allows certain persons to avoid the constitutional provisions for acquiring belongership by residence, marriage, etc.  In future such persons should not be given Anguillian or belonger status.  British nationality should be removed from belonger status. 

2. Checks and balances.  Internal self-government requires that the public be confident that the opportunities for abuse by local leaders will be minimised.  It is no use taking the power away from a British civil servant and giving it to a local politician if the politician can use it to promote his family and friends.  What are some of the checks and balances that we can put in place?  Here is a shopping list, with no sense of priority.

(a) The House of Assembly must stop being a rubber-stamp for the Executive Council.  The main reason why this happens is that most members of the House are Ministers of government, or Parliamentary Secretaries, or Nominated Members, or Ex-Officio members of Executive Council.  The solution is to completely alter the structure of the House so that:

(i) Nominated Members must be done away with.  They are not elected and their presence is undemocratic;

(ii) Ex-officio members should not have a vote.  Nobody elected them to vote in the House.  They can stay in the House to advise the Speaker and the Members, but without the power to vote;

(iii) Increase the number of elected members so that the Ministers will never again fill most of the seats.  Let the House be big enough that a substantial part of it will always be independent of the Ministers.  One way to achieve this is to provide that Ministers can never be more than half of the House, eg, with 13 members, a maximum of 6 Ministers.

(iv) A vote of no confidence should pass on a simple majority.  The present position is that it takes a vote of three-quarters of the House.  That means that a minority government can continue to try to rule the country without ever being able to pass a law or a motion in the House.  That happened with Hubert's last government.  It should never be allowed to happen again.

(b) The Police should be under the control of an independent Police Complaints Authority.  It is wrong that if you have a complaint against a police officer you can only go to the Commissioner to complain about it.

(c) Ministerial Code of Ethics:  We can no longer leave it up to the private code of ethics of Ministers.  Ministers should be educated in how to deal with conflicts of interest, and they should promise to conform to a Ministerial Code of Ethics as is done in other countries.

(d) Voting at large:  The constituency system has its weaknesses.  The persons who get elected tend to be the ones with most family connections in the Constituency, or the ones who are rich enough to pay for votes.  If the whole country had to vote for some of the representatives, we can be sure that they would not be related to most of the people across the country, and they would never afford to pay off voters throughout the country.  It would bring to the House persons who were genuinely popular throughout the country.  In Montserrat, all the Members are elected this way, in BVI it is some of them.

(e) Campaign funding:  We need a law in place to provide for the regulation of political fund-raising.  We need to make politicians provide an audit of their political funds on a regular basis.  There should be stiff penalties for infringement. 

(f) Public Accounts Committee:  We need to strengthen the provision for this committee to keep an eye on public expenditure.  The committee is not provided for in the Constitution, and it has never sat.  We need to make sure this never happens again.

(g) Interests Commissioner:  There must be an entrenched provision for Members of the House to declare their assets and interests and for their declarations to be published, with severe penalties for infringement.  This is one of the most important anti-corruption measures that is missing from our Constitution.

(h) Crown land:  At the present time, the Governor deals in public land based on the advice of Executive Council.  There is no transparency.  Land is exchanged and leased without the public knowing anything about it.  In future, no land in excess of half an acre should be dealt in without a resolution or the House of Assembly.

(i) National Security Council:  There should be provision for such a Council to deal with national security issues.  It should be made responsible for all matters of policy and oversight relating to internal security, including the police force.

(j) Ombudsman/Human Rights Commissioner:  There should be provision for such an officer of Parliament to report to the House and to be independent of any government department.

(k) Boundaries Commission:  The Constitution should provide for an independent Commission to review the boundaries of parliamentary districts from time to time, say, after each census, and to ensure the districts are more or less equal in population size.

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[1]    In the Partnership for Progress White Paper.

AL-HCS

My Experience of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School.

A paper prepared for the Comprehensive Education Review Team by Don Mitchell CBE QC, dated 27 April 2009.

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I am grateful to have been invited to address the team on the subject of my views on how the present comprehensive education system is working. As you know, I am a retired lawyer and High Court Judge. I occupy some of my retirement time by teaching part-time at the High School. My subject is A-Level law for the CAPE programme. I teach one class for two hours a day, three days a week. My students are in Form VI A and B. I have been teaching only since September 2007. My exposure to the High School system is limited. However, I have my views, relatively uninformed as they are. I am grateful for the opportunity to share them with you.

I have about 15 students in all. They are aged 17-18 years old. They are in the final years of High School. Being Form VI students, they may be described as the cream of the cream of Anguilla’s education system. They are not intending to become technical persons. They aspire to academic and professional careers. They would not be doing law if it were otherwise. Besides, they have all assured me that they want to be lawyers, business professionals, doctors, and accountants. You would expect that, with these ambitions, their work product would be of a high standard.

My students have recently submitted their research papers for the 2009 School Based Assessment, part of their final exams. I have been reading them and grading them. The following are samples taken at random from five different essays written for this year’s CAPE Law SBAs. I have made no attempt to rank them or to select particularly poor paragraphs. I have not selected particularly bad essays. I picked the first five that came to hand, and opened the pages at random:

“Drinking under the influence of alcohol, poses a serious threat to not only the driver who is impaired but also the driver on the receiving end of the crash. As a result of a negligent act of driving whether alcohol consumption or otherwise, damages are awarded are great. “

. . . . .

“In order for one to succeed in defamation they have to make sure that their words were Defamatory, that the words refer to one and that they were published to at least one person other than to the claimant.”

. . . . .

“Therefore, with the technological advancement of cell phones became an integral role in our society and people have come to be extremely reliant on cell phones especially while driving. However, the convenience they offer must be judge against the hazard they pose.”

. . . . .

“The likelihood of harm would therefore be that if Mr B does not obey the 2 second rule, it would be more than likely that upon a sudden stop by Mrs A, due to no fault of hers, Mr B would crash into the rear of her car; The seriousness of the Injury would depend on whether Mrs A was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the incident or not; The defendant’s conduct, Mr B’s, would have no great social value unless the accident was of a different nature; finally, it would possibly have been more costly and less practicable for the defendant to avoid the accident at such a last minute by maybe swerving unto the side walk or further out into the road.”

. . . . .

“In evaluating such an offence to with the burning of domestic waste in Anguilla, there are offence which can deal with such an offence that has been embedded in its Criminal Code and the Nuisance Regulation.”

Most of these essays are painfully difficult to read. It is hard sometimes to understand what the student is writing about. Vocabulary, punctuation, syntax and grammar, the basic ingredients two of the “three Rs”, in these essays are poor. I continue to be dissatisfied at the inadequate level of English language usage. My concern is that these students will leave Anguilla’s high school system essentially uneducated. They cannot justifiably expect any degree of advancement in any of the careers they have been telling me they aspire to follow. In my view, they are the product of an unsatisfactory education system.

In my estimation, only 3 of my 15 students can either write or express themselves verbally above a Form II standard. The 3 exceptions are the children of professionals. I assume their parents put pressure on them to achieve and to excel in school. Those children who do not come from equally ambitious backgrounds are not being helped by the present school system. I had not realised that the Comprehensive Education System as it works in Anguilla is designed to ensure that only the children who are the beneficiaries of additional home schooling would reach an acceptable standard of basic education after they have graduated from the High School.

I am conscious that the secondary school system is not the only culprit in this failure shown towards the students of Anguilla. I understand that the children’s education problems start long before they reach the High School. Parents, who were too busy to read to them when they were very young, are partly to blame. The primary schools are graduating students who cannot read or write. There is frequently no adult present when the students come home after class to encourage them to study and prepare. Drugs, alcohol and pornography on the internet are pervasive. These adversely impact young persons in Anguilla when they are left to their own devices.

The paucity of the facilities at the High School is noticeable. The school library serves as the Form VI students’ lounge. The books are in the mess you would expect. I have not asked, but it is unlikely that any student, other than a sixth former, would dare to enter the room. The public library is no substitute. It is a place to go to gossip and to play computer games. The different reading rooms in the library are not invigilated when there are students in them, as they ought to be. The public library of Anguilla is distinguished mainly by the absence of worthwhile literature and reference works. There has been no attempt to build up a permanent collection of regional and international classics. There has for years been a culture among the public library staff that if a book is old then it must be deemed soiled and fit only to be disposed of. Several of my students have told me that they have not borrowed a book from the public library to read for either pleasure or instruction in over ten years. Their explanation is that there are no books worth reading in the library. There is no invigilated study room in the school, as there ought to be, for students who have no class to sit quietly and study. The result is that there are groups of boys and girls hiding in corners of the schoolyard laughing and chatting at all hours of the day. There is no supervision of the students in the school yard during breaks or at lunch time. This encourages them to engage in bad behaviour. It reinforces their perception that there are no consequences for bad behaviour. Foul language is commonly overheard, among boys and girls. There is no one to report their misconduct, and no penalty of any consequence if anyone did. Many of the teachers I meet are disillusioned and disgruntled. The teacher’s common room is a dump. I have never seen more than five or six teachers in it at lunch time or at any other time, except when the Principal holds meetings. The explanation for its present dilapidated state is that it is old, about to be replaced, and not worth repainting.

There is no necessity for the education authorities to compound all the wider social faults and defects by providing an education system that seems designed to ensure that the present generation of Anguillian students will not be able to hold their own when they grow up and go out into the real world.

The comprehensive education system as I have found it has been a disappointment. Anguilla’s children are being cheated out of a decent secondary education. Radical reform is needed. I am not qualified to make recommendations on how to reform the system. I will leave that for others who are more qualified than I am.