CYPRUS has one of the highest school dropout rates in Europe, with one in 11 students failing to complete secondary level education.
A 2005 Eurostat survey on 32 countries revealed only Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, Malta and Turkey fared worse.
“The European Statistical services for 2005 shows 18.1 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds have not completed the second part of secondary level education, in other words lyceum or technical school,” DISY deputy Maria Kyriakou told a news conference yesterday.
“More worrying is the fact that Cyprus’ dropout rate exceeds the EU 25 and EU 15 averages of 15.2 per cent and 17.2 per cent respectively.”
In fact Slovenia, Norway, Croatia and Poland all had dropout levels under six per cent, “meaning the foreign workers that come here from Eastern European countries are much more educated in comparison”, she said.
Kyriakou, who for three years has campaigned to raise awareness about the island’s high school dropout rates, accused the government of hiding behind “its little finger” in its attempt to spin the figures.
The issue first came to light in 2004 during a session of the Children’s Parliament. Deputies heard that due to severe financial difficulties or family situations, children were often forced to work, leaving them no time to keep up with their studies and finally forcing them to dropout of school early.
The matter was once more brought to the forefront during Monday’s House Finance Committee, when the topic of employment was raised as part of the committee’s discussion on the islands’ progress regarding the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy.
The Lisbon Strategy is an action and development plan for the European Union. It intends to deal with the low productivity and stagnation of economic growth in the EU, through the formulation of various economic, social, and environmental policy initiatives to be adopted by all EU member states. It was adopted for a ten-year period in 2000 in Lisbon, Portugal by the European Council and broadly aims at making “the EU the world’s most dynamic and competitive economy” by 2010.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail later, Kyriakou said: “We have to file the report on how our progress to implement the strategy is going… [But] instead of doing something about the problem, the government is looking for excuses about why the numbers are the way they are, with the result that no measures are being taken and the number of children without basic education is alarmingly increasing… One of the Lisbon Strategy’s basic targets is to improve jobs and salaries. How, if we don’t have the basics needed to work, can we do that?”
Kyriakou said the situation was “tragic” and that many children were leaving school unequipped with the necessary tools to get ahead in life.
She said although education was compulsory until the third year of gymnasium, a large number of children dropped out sooner.
The DISY deputy said the political party had last year conducted an independent study to determine how widespread the problem was and found an alarming number of pupils had dropped out of compulsory education at primary or low secondary level.
“We found that in the past 14 years, a minimum of 14,000 children had not completed gymnasium, and of that number, 4,000 had not even completed primary school.”
Kyriakou said a large number of children were also recorded on school registrars as having graduated, when in fact they had been absent from lessons and become involved in bad company.
She said the Labour and Education Ministries had a responsibility to encourage children to complete their secondary education and to go on to tertiary education, instead of allowing the phenomenon of school dropouts joining the workforce to continue.
This could be done by modernising the education system in such a way that it promoted the necessity to complete secondary education, as well as by upgrading technical schools, giving less academic children the opportunity to get ahead in an increasingly competitive workforce, she said.
“We don’t all have to be doctors or lawyers. The world needs plumbers and electricians too, people who are clever with their hands, so we must stop belittling technical colleges.
“Parents and employers also need to learn that children need to go to school, and legislation needs to be drawn up banning children from full time employment, either at a paid job or working for their parents. Children that do drop out should also be encouraged to enrol in night school to complete their education, and the state should offer help and support to families in need so that all children have equal education opportunities and good health.”
