And a bit more about Cypriot schools.
Right now, under my windows, public school teachers in Cyprus are protesting. The picture above isn’t from this protest; it’s from the website www.parikiaki.com, where they covered the teacher protests in 2013.
I haven’t conducted any journalistic investigations, just observing the situation through the news and what some local acquaintances have said. So, I’ll share how I see it, without claiming complete accuracy.
First, just a few facts about schools. Being a teacher in Cyprus is very prestigious and lucrative. Teachers in public schools earn MORE than teachers in private schools. To secure a position in a public school, you have to wait in line with other hopefuls. I don’t know the exact details, but one of my acquaintances has been waiting in such a queue for about 20 years. Yes, you read that right, about twenty years! And this person holds a fairly high-ranking position as a department head at a private British school.
So, Cypriot teachers are not the same as teachers in Russia or Belarus.
Moving on. This spring, the results of a professional certification exam for teachers were published. As far as I know, teachers weren’t tested on general knowledge, but specifically in their subject area. More than 60% failed the exam. Less than 10% (!) passed.
Alongside this, the year-end exams for students showed that the level of education in public schools is also declining (which makes sense if the teachers themselves don’t know their subject).
In 2016, a law was passed that from 2018, 50% of new teachers will be hired based on test results, with the rest taken from the waiting list (previously, it seems, they were all hired from the queue).
The Minister of Education decided to save money and improve education by proposing not to reduce the workload for teachers involved in union activities and extracurricular events, and by canceling the reduction in working hours for teachers who have been in the profession for more than 15 years (yes, here in Cyprus, teachers officially had the right to work fewer hours as they aged but for the same pay).
So, by summer, things were heating up. Discussions began on education reform, revising teacher salaries, and other interesting matters. Fortunately, there’s a new Minister of Education.
Then the Auditor General of the Republic of Cyprus released a report from an independent audit company, which revealed that the school year in Cypriot public schools is the shortest in the entire European Union, and the number of students per teacher is the lowest. Overall, the government is spending a lot of money on education, but the level of education remains low.
All summer long, there was a standoff between the unions and the government, threatening to derail the start of the school year in September.
At the moment, the government’s demands are not that extreme:
- Reducing the paid extracurricular hours for class teachers from two to one hour per week.
- Implementing tracking of teacher absenteeism.
- Reducing the teaching load by one hour (instead of two) for teachers with more than 15 years of service.
But the teachers want to earn more and work less. So they protest.
From my personal point of view, they’re spoiled. And since there’s a long line of people waiting for these jobs, they should replace the dissatisfied ones, test the new candidates, and hire better-qualified teachers. This would definitely benefit education.
Overall, this situation is very telling for Cyprus, and after living here for four years, it no longer surprises me. What does surprise me is that the government is finally standing its ground and not making critical concessions.
