ENGLISH School Board Chairman Kyriakos Vassiliou has confirmed the board will try to implement a series of expert recommendations to encourage the integration of its Turkish Cypriot students.
“It [the report] is a very useful tool. There are recommendations that will be very helpful to the school,” he said.
Vassiliou was referring to a consultation report drawn up by Dr Laurie Johnson, a professor at the School of Education and Allied Human Services at the University of Hofstra. In her report, Johnson lists a series of 14 findings and recommendations on how the school can facilitate its integration of Turkish Cypriot students.
The report was part of the fee-paying establishment’s school-wide initiative to promote a culturally responsive school ethos in light of its re-enrolment of Turkish Cypriot students in 2006.
Johnson was invited to Cyprus following her extensive work with integrated schools in Northern Ireland.
“It is a long report and we need time to ponder on a number of things especially on the priority to be given to the recommendations,” he said.
The chairman, who was appointed to the board in April, is seen by many as a man with an inclusive agenda, who will do much to repair the damage caused to its image by a series of racist incidents over the past two years.
In November 2006 a group of Turkish Cypriot students enrolled at the school were beaten up by students from a nearby gymnasium. This year the school’s Turkish Language room was defaced, and earlier this month Greek nationalist graffiti was found sprayed across the Nicosia fee-paying school’s walls. ‘The English School is Greek,’ said one slogan. Others targeted specific teachers.
Johnson first came to the island in January 2006 where she set up an Advisory Committee made up of all stakeholders, including the staff, the senior management team (SMT), the school board, the parents association, and student representatives. After six months she prepared a climate survey which according to the Pedagogical Institute was scientifically valid.
In the summer of 2007, Johnson returned to the island. After 15 days of in-depth interviews with stakeholders, she prepared a series of recommendations about how to have an effective integrated school. On the basis of these, a second report was drawn up with 14 recommendations.
Vassiliou said changes would be made but each recommendation would be taken one at a time.
“It is a useful tool and many of the recommendations will either be implemented as they are or will be modified in the way the school board sees fit,” the chairman said.
Through all her discussions, Johnson said “the unanimous commitment to promote success on the part of the English School graduate” emerged.
She said: “To do this of course is to recognise that the ES must provide its students with the opportunity and encouragement to learn the skills, attitudes and knowledge required by today’s increasingly diverse and complex global society.”
Johnson said the school would only achieve its goal through a universal commitment, at every level, including students, staff, parents, management and the board.
She also said it was important to provide each student with a learning experience and environment that was: safe and caring, promoted a broad view of student success, developed the potential of each student, promoted well-rounded learning, respected individual differences and cultural diversity, responded to the linguistic and cultural needs of all student learners, nurtured physical well-being, self-worth and dignity, promoted the development of responsible global citizens, promoted collaboration and cooperation across all stakeholder groups, supported professional development for all staff, and achieved high standards of responsible citizenship, conduct, safety and well-being of students and staff.
As part of its measures to really increase staff awareness regarding the issues involved, the school has already set up a voluntary intensive training course for a group of 13 teachers. The course, which is paid for by the school and started in March and ends in June, consists of weekly two-hour training sessions from experts at the Universities of Cyprus and Nicosia, as well as the Open University and from Israel.
It is designed to teach educators to examine the way they teach, the language they use, the way they deal with issues in the classroom, the way they handle issues and to realise the power they have in conflict resolution both in and outside the classroom.
“People have to realise when every individual student matters and every individual student is happy, only in this environment can you be effective [as a school],” course organisers said.
As part of the course a smaller group of five or six teachers will fly to Northern Ireland where tomorrow they will visit three very effective and very successful integrated schools.
They will also attend a two-day conference at Belfast’s Queens University on Cyprus and Divided Societies on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Such is the success of the training course that the school is planning on forming a new group in the new academic year.
“Already more teachers are asking when it will be offered again and so the intention is to offer it to more teachers,” organisers said.
“Focusing solely on GCE does not make an effective environment. It’s about happy people. People learning how to be effective in society. Good GCE results are part of that but schools are much more than just GCEs.”
Johnson’s recommendations
1. Re-establish, reinvigorate and further empower an Advisory Council as a means of incorporating a broader base of stakeholder input in the ongoing problem-solving and planning matters of the ES as related to carrying out its mission.
2. Further Engage Parents in common commitment to the ES mission to promote excellence in education in a safe, caring and responsible intercultural environment for all students.
3. Further establish policy, procedures, mechanisms and strengthen the management (infra)structure needed to successfully achieve the ES mission to promote academic excellence in an ethos of safety, caring, responsibility and multicultural interdependence.
4. Constructively Address Discipline in the ES. As part of this, the ES is advised to strengthen its discipline codes and procedures, including trust building, in ways that would better articulate universal understanding of behavioural expectations and how they are enforced within the school community.
5. Strengthen Pastoral Care support in the ES not only in relation to better addressing diversity issues but in relation to fostering character development and citizenship competencies.
6. Strengthen/increase the presence of Turkish Cypriot teachers/staff in the ES. In this instance Johnson was not promoting positive discrimination in favour of Turkish Cypriot, merely pointing out that with the increased numbers of Turkish Cypriot students enrolling at the ES, decisions to decrease the teaching hours and limit to part-time status of current Turkish Cypriot staff suggest a diminished sense of importance/value that is antithetical to the increase in numbers of Turkish Cypriot students who are being accepted into the school.
7. Improve Communications within the ES community including parents, staff and students.
8. Address Language Contentions in the ES community. There needs to be a more thoughtful understanding and treatment of language and cultural differences in the school community as a means of fostering intercultural respect and relations. For example using the expression “English School students” instead of “Greek Cypriot students” and “Turkish Cypriot students”.
9. Develop and Implement a Strategic Staff Training & Development Program at the ES.
10. Strengthen Student Development and Leadership Opportunities at ES.
To foster the sense of civic responsibility on the part of students, educationalists around the world have documented the value of promoting opportunities for students to engage in decision-making and collaborative problem-solving that affects the school community.
11. Inaugurate a whole-school, theme-based annual initiative (organized through the Pastoral Team and utilizing form tutors, year heads in conjunction with the student council) that is designed to promote the ES mission each academic year.
12. Implement formal curricular exposure to World Religions as a means of expanding the current offering of Religious Instruction singularly in the Greek Orthodox religion.
13. Reconsider the configuration, qualifications, responsibilities and compensation of Form Tutors and Year Heads in the ES.
14. Establish a Crisis Management Plan at the ES aligned with best practices in EU/UK/USA education.
ES Consultation Report, LJohnson, June 2007
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