PARENTS AT a Nicosia primary school were yesterday instructed not to send their children to school after the Education Ministry failed to transfer a disruptive pupil.
The Cyprus Primary Schools’ Union, as well as educators, have denounced the option of moving the11-year-old boy and say more should be done to help the child fit in, rather than simply stigmatising him. For its part the Ministry said it had made plans to offer the boy help but that the school’s Parents Association had rejected these.
On Monday the Palouriotissa B Primary School Parents Association told parents to keep their children home yesterday to protest the Ministry’s failure to deal with a student, who according to their press release was “violent, obscene and a danger to other children’s safety.”
“The boy is a danger to himself and other children,” said the association chairman George Theodoulou. “We want the Ministry to come up with a direct solution that will help treat him so that he can eventually fit into his social environment.”
Theodoulou said the problems started at the beginning of the new school year. For four months the association called on the Ministry to offer the child daily emotional and psychological support, but was ignored.
“There are 100 children like this boy in Nicosia and none of them receive special attention. Why not? Because these programmes cost money? These kids will grow up psychologically unbalanced and become a threat to themselves and society,” he warned.
The 11-year-old boy was highly intelligent, but suffered from a series of severe psychological problems that dated back to his childhood, said Theodoulou. “He is unpredictable and violent and blows up at random.”
According to Theodoulou the child had allegedly tried to commit suicide a number of times by jumping off the school’s roof, attacked his teacher’s aid, sending her to hospital, concussed a little girl and took sharp objects, such as razor blades, into class.
“He is not even happy at our school and wants to go back to his old one. He only came to this school because he moved home and his address changed,” he said. Under the state school system, children go to school in the area they live in. “We don’t have a problem with his presence here if the Ministry does something to help him. This action was not to ostracise the child, but a way of getting the government to help all children in the same fate.”
But that is exactly what they were doing, said Primary School Union President, Dinos Ellinas. “I categorically disagree with this school’s parents association. They should find a way to help the child join the social whole and not set him aside. If adults cannot accept him how can other children,” he said.
The Cyprus Mail learned yesterday that other children at the school had learned the boy “had a problem with his brain” and that they called him names.
“When children feel threatened or unaccepted by those around them they will react negatively. Speaking from experience, the child should be shown kindness and love and he will flourish. He should also be under the care of educational psychologists and given special attention by his teachers,” said retired headmistress Anna Farmaka. But, having worked as a teacher for 36 years, she knew only too well how understaffed educational psychologists were.
“There are so many schools and so many pupils and yet so very few experts to see them all. It is up to the government to employ more,” said Farmaka.
The Ministry’s Primary Education department issued a statement that said it had decided to give the child a “special education, a permanent escort, support during specific hours and to draw up a special programme in co-operation with an educational psychologist” instead.
Theodoulou said this “special education” involved keeping the child out of class except physical education, art and music. “That will lead to his discrimination and possible ridiculing and besides he should have a proper education,” he said.
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.
