GOVERNMENT teachers can give private lessons outside school hours legally if given permission by the Education Ministry, the minister said yesterday, but authorities admitted there was little way to control the spiralling problem of unlicensed tuition.
Education Minister Ouranios Ioannides told the Cyprus Mail that giving private lessons was not necessarily illegal for teachers.
“Legislation dating from the 1960s allows the Education Ministry to give any teacher — whether from a state school, institution or University in Cyprus –permission to teach outside classroom hours.
“However, they can only teach a maximum of six extra hours a week.
“And this permission is only given to a limited number of teachers,” he added.
Permanent Secretary for Education Petros Kareklas would not disclose the number of state teachers allowed to teach privately but acknowledged “there are not many”.
“We have given approval to some teachers to teach up to six hours extra a week, so long as we judge this wont interfere with their normal classes.
“We register these teachers and inform the income tax department accordingly,” he added.
Asked how many teachers operated without such permission, Kareklas said, “it’s difficult to say because we don’t have figures”.
“However we do investigate allegations regarding illegal lessons. The problem is that people are not always willing to testify against illegal teaching.
“After all, why would parents want to report a private teacher operating illegally if he or she is helping their son or daughter to pass exams?
“Sometimes we get anonymous letters reporting individuals but by law we need concrete testimonies to prove their illegal actions.
“If testimonies are given, the Educational Service Commission judges the cases reported. But we cannot play the role of the police and follow teachers after school hours.”
Kareklas said few teachers were given permission by the Ministry to give extra lessons in their own homes.
“Most are given licence to give extra tuition in state institutes. The number of teachers allowed to teach from home is limited.”
Education Committee Chairman Prodromos Prodromou said yesterday that it was difficult to estimate how many children in Cyprus attended extra lessons because most were given illegally.
“Private lessons are widespread here. The extent of the problem is very well known. Almost every pupil in Cyprus at Lyceum level takes private lessons to prepare for University in Greece or Cyprus.
“Of course, we wonder whether teachers are doing their best in our classrooms given that they can profit from giving extra tuition.
“Certainly the truth is that extra lessons are not needed to the extent they are given. Even at private schools we see the private lesson phenomenon.
“It’s perhaps because in Cyprus there is a strong link between education and social status. Cypriot families on average spend a lot on educating their children.”
Asked if anything new ought to be done to crackdown on the problem Prodromou said: “We have tried to involve the police, but this has proved inefficient.
“There isn’t a single solution to the problem.
“What we really need is a package of measures, including measures to try and motivate our teachers and make them believe their work is worthwhile. The system of teacher evaluation for example, needs changing.
“Another solution is to double the number of places available to students in universities. If we had a few more universities in Cyprus, the fierce competition for places both here and abroad would be reduced — there would be less pressure on both candidates and their families.
“But the hardest thing is to convince people their children don’t need extra lessons. You can’t easily change a person’s perception of what his child needs to get into university.”
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.
