In the lead-up to the 2007 general election, some members of the Free National Movement had pointed to the dismal national grade average as a sign of the Christie administration's failure in education.

But the use of the grade average is now being abandoned by the current government with Minister of Education Desmond Bannister calling it a "misleading and nonsensical statistic".

One of the explanations he provided when he contributed to debate in the House of Assembly on the 2010/2011 budget on Monday is that not all students sit all subjects.

For example, the minister said, while more than 5,000 students sit mathematics, only 100 sit electrical installations in any given year.

"The disparity in subscription and the difference in students do not provide for a credible average, students who sat one subject may not be the same who sat the other," Bannister explained.

He said calculating a national average is an erroneous practice and no other country has been found to do so.

"The practice around the world is to provide year by year comparative analysis by individual subjects and by school performance," he said, adding that in the United Kingdom secondary school examination results are being used as a basis for identifying and closing under-performing schools.

Education officials have repeatedly indicated that in The Bahamas, many schools are under-performing.

In fact, Director of Education Lionel Sands acknowledged yesterday that there is a crisis in education, and a pressing need for teachers and school administrators to be held accountable for the performance of their students.

"The national grade average allowed any number of persons who are responsible to hide behind the grade average," he said.

Sands wished to make it clear that education officials are not running away from assessing the academic performance of students.

"When we had the national averages over the last 16-plus years, that didn't really give any specific focus to the various disciplines that would have been tested in the BGCSE or the BJC examinations and so to say that we're moving away from giving focus to [assessing academic performance], we're not really moving away from giving focus. We're actually focusing on what we ought to be focusing on, and that is in the first instance we are focusing on the performance of students in individual subjects and that speaks to how successful the programs in those subjects are in each individual school," he said.

Click here to read more in The Nassau Guardian