The names of many of our public schools pay tribute to master teachers whose contributions to national development were extraordinary and critical. As students return to school today, they should be reminded of those contributions by educators.

Today's teachers should draw inspiration from yesterday's masters. Indeed, there remain many fine teachers and administrators in our public schools. We salute them as well as dedicated professionals in the Ministry of Education.

There should be no illusions about the difficulties teachers face in terms of student indiscipline, in terms of work ethic and poor behaviour. Add to this, a lack of parental support for teachers, and one gets a sense of what teachers face on a daily basis.

Within this context, we have high praise for those parents who are committed to improving public education through involvement in school boards, parent-teacher associations and other areas.

Noteworthy are collaborations between teachers and parents. The recent community outreach program at Sadie Curtis, geared towards boosting parental involvement in that primary school, is exemplary.

There are clear improvements in public education, including improved test scores.

Still, there is much work to be done. That work will have to be done by students hungry to learn and grow. But, that work also requires greater efforts and collaboration by parents and educators.

On other occasions we will address the parental role in quality education. Today, we again address the role of quality teaching. The title of headmaster or headmistress was often synonymous with head teacher. And, for good reason.

The idea was that the leader or principal of a school was not singularly a manager or administrator. One of the head's defining roles was to ensure the quality of teaching and instruction.

It is a role which should be stressed with equal measure to that of effective administration of our public schools. This will require that principals have other administrators and support staff assisting them in school administration.

More principals need to spend more time in classrooms rigorously observing teacher performance. The system for mentoring new teachers as well as teachers needing improvement will have to be reviewed and improved in various public schools.

We also renew our call for more effective teacher evaluation. This includes more vigorous assessment measures which truly gauge subject proficiency, teaching methods and student performance relative to the quality of teaching.

We look forward to various improvements in the upcoming school year. Throughout the year, we will continue to address in various sections of this journal: Parental engagement, the quality of teaching, and leadership by school principals.

We wish all public and private schools a successful 2010/11 school year.