Efforts to finalise funding for London school

By Andrew Adamides

AS PLANS for the first ever bilingual school catering for the Greek Cypriot community come closer to fruition in London, representatives of GALE, the Greek Association for Language Enhancement, are in Cyprus to finalise details of government funding for the project.

Planning began in earnest last year, when a suitable building in Croydon became free, and 80 per cent of the £4 million required to fund the school has been acquired from the British Education Ministry.

But GALE is anxious to conclude the financing phase of the project, as the building has now stood empty for a year and is costing Croydon Council £20, 000 a month.

At present, the government provides the UK Cypriot community with 36 part- time teachers, who GALE head George Kastelanides says have to struggle to fit in Greek lessons. The founding of a school, he says, will provide a better solution to the problem of keeping British Cypriot children in touch with their roots.

It is hoped that the school, St Cyprian’s, will open in September 1999, at first offering primary education but with the possibility of a secondary department being established later.

The school will teach the British national curriculum, but with the addition of Greek language classes, and will also focus on Greek culture and the Greek Orthodox religion. Such schools already exist in other overseas Cypriot communities around the world.

The GALE representatives will meet House President Spyros Kyprianou on Monday, and will later meet President Glafcos Clerides, who has expressed firm support for the project.

Kastelanides says the project “is 95 percent there”, with funding has also coming from private sources. The school’s running costs will be met by the British government. Additional funding from Cyprus is, he adds, more of a psychological boost than anything else, something to let the British Cypriots know they have the material backing of their homeland.

GALE is asking that the government give them a one-off £500,000, split into instalments.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.