THE OUTGOING chairman of the Education Service Commission, Christos Theofilides, was scathing about the teaching standards at state schools, in presenting an evaluation of the six years he spent in the job. He blamed the low placing of Cyprus (27th in a group of 30) in the Timss international survey – establishing student standards, in theoretical subjects, in different countries – on the teachers, the antiquated method of their appointment and the system in general.
This paper has for years been calling for the abolition of the absurd ‘registry’ whereby graduates, without any teaching qualifications, are put on a ministry waiting list and await their appointment as a teacher to a state school. It is an undiscriminating system whereby even the most unsuitable graduates, as long as they are prepared to wait 10 to 20 years, will eventually be appointed, no questions asked. Is there any other business or state organisation in Cyprus that would hire staff, without any form of evaluation of the candidates? Yet teachers, to whom the education of tomorrow’s citizens is entrusted, do not even have to meet the most basic requirements to be hired – all they need is a degree. It is a criminally irresponsible policy.
Theofilides was very clear about this issue, saying that the registry system did away with meritocracy and replaced it with gerontocracy. “For certain specialisations, the average age of the appointees is so high that we can talk of gerontocracy in education,” he said. This undiscriminating attitude towards the teachers’ abilities and performance was also the norm within the schools, said Theophilides. All teachers, no matter how poor they are at their job, receive top marks when they are evaluated, with the result that seniority becomes the only criterion for promotion. There are teachers, “who cannot put two words together”, when interviewed by the promotions boards, but are still promoted because they have top marks in their evaluation.
Even the programme, making it compulsory for graduates to receive teaching qualifications, before being appointed, had been abandoned, after a couple of years in force. It has been replaced by in-school training, which means that even the most unsuitable graduates – with no commitment to teaching – who are not even prepared to make the sacrifice of receiving teacher-training are being appointed, because it is their turn! It is a scandalous state of affairs which no self-respecting government, genuinely interested in giving children a decent education would have tolerated for three minutes, let alone two decades.
But in Cyprus, we have created an education system that abhors excellence and actively promotes mediocrity; a system that serves unmotivated graduates looking for an easy and undemanding job. Nobody seems to care that children are being let down so badly by the schools and if they want an education they have to have afternoon private lessons. What is incredible is that parents say nothing about the poor standard of education being provided, as if they do not care that their children are being sold short by the state. Yet unless they start protesting and putting pressure on the government nothing will ever be done.
