LAST YEAR Margaret and John Collingwood left Birmingham with their two young children eager to start a new life in Paphos.
They knew it meant upheaval, but they genuinely felt they had done all their basic homework in terms of living and working here. A major concern was the standard of schooling available for their six-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. They visited local schools, talked to other parents and eventually bought a home in a village within walking distance of the local primary school.
Little more than a year later, and the Collingwoods have joined the growing throng of 30-something Britons with children who came to Cyprus, only to find their children are so unhappy at school because of language problems or bullying that they are now either moving back or seriously considering it.
Ask what went wrong and most of the men and women I spoke to with school age children blamed the general standard of both our public and private education system
“The biggest mistake we made was putting our children into a village school right from the off,” said 37-year-old John. “They didn’t fare well at all, and in hindsight we shouldn’t have just thrown them into a totally Greek-speaking environment expecting them to ‘pick up’ the language just because both were young and had always been willing to learn.”
John has realised it is a myth to think “kids pick up a language quickly and are able to easily adapt to new experiences”.
It certainly was in their case. Within three weeks, he said, they would be exhausted by the end of the school day and simmering with resentment.
“The school, despite me being told to the contrary, offered no special consideration what so ever to those in the class who’s first language wasn’t Greek. It was a case of ‘follow us or fail’, and even when the teacher was teaching English she was so inexperienced both in the language and in the teaching of English, that foreign pupils barely recognised what she was going on about, with the result my little girl who had always been good at written English even failed her tests in the subject,” said John.
His son, he said, was bullied mercilessly by children younger than he, and he would often come home in tears. “We then had a terrible job trying to get him to go back to school every morning.
“We tried talking to the headmistress about both our children’s problems, but she was totally unconcerned. As for the bullying she said that was ‘just normal with boys’. The teaching practices she said were ‘laid down for Cypriots not foreigners and they didn’t have time to mother children’.”
The couple had no option. They took their children out of the public system and enrolled them this autumn in a private school. Margaret is now working full time to help pay basic school fees, plus find money to pay for additional tuition fees. None of this was budgeted it for when they first decided to move here.
Andrew Devine, 41, meanwhile, has already ‘booked passage’ home and leaves Paphos next month, after living and setting up a successful business here along with his wife and two children age 11 and nine.
“I have to go back to the UK. The welfare of my children comes first. Sadly, that’s not the case with the educational system here,” he said.
“I naively believed that when I delivered my children over to the school authorities, they would ensure they were educated and kept safe. I say naïve because that doesn’t happen here in Paphos.”
Both his boys were quick learners in the UK and did well, and that is why Andrew felt confident they could cope with living in Cyprus.
“We have been here 18 months and in that time my children’s grades have plummeted despite private coaching and home schooling. My eldest boy has had his hand broken by a younger child who was not even reprimanded. The other has been stabbed in the arm and been hit over the head with a metal chair,” he said.
Bullying is unfortunately commonplace pretty much the world over, a fact Andrew accepts. Where Cyprus is different, he believes, from the UK for example is how both the teachers and parents react to bullying.
“Bullying is not taken seriously by the teachers or by the parents of the bullies. It seems local kids have zero respect for their teachers, and absolutely none for their parents and grandparents, who just seem to let them run wild, so the class rooms are basically places where discipline isn’t used in any shape or form.”
Both his children now attend a local private school which “charges an arm and a leg for everything”.
Miriam and Tom Aitken have lived here for only eighteen months. They love the island, were married here, have their own thriving business but unless they can gain permission to keep their child out of school to be taught at home, they will certainly leave and go back to the UK.
“My husband and I had a stark wake up call when our daughter came home from school with bite marks on her arm. Naturally, we went to the school and wanted to talk to her form mistress to find out what was going on as my daughter told me there was a boy who just went round biting girls and kicking them.”
In the UK, she said, there are systems in place involving parents and teachers to control bullying and intimidation.
“One day I entered the playground to find my daughter’s form mistress standing a few metres away from a boy who had pinned down onto the ground a smaller boy. He was astride him punching him in the face. I shouted over to the form mistress to ask her to stop this fighting, her reply was ‘Leave them be, it’s normal for all boys to fight’.
“This woman didn’t know the difference between high spirited wrestling or horseplay and blatant vicious bullying.”
When Miriam asked the headmaster whether offenders could be suspended, he replied it is illegal here to remove a child from schooling.
Miriam and other parents like her don’t feel able to form a pressure group to demand change.
“British parents here are basically nervous of being labelled as complainers. We don’t want our children picked on as being ‘different’ because their mum complains a lot. Also you do feel so useless here not knowing what or where to go higher up the educational scale in order to get answers.”
Bullying isn’t a problem just for non-Cypriot kids, a fact Miriam is quick to acknowledge.
“I know other mums who are Cypriot, so it’s not just us foreigners who have a problem,” she said. “They also tell me that it’s impossible to get straight answers from teachers or the head or even get anywhere near to changing the system.”
Miriam is also concerned about the way teachers recommend a visit to a child psychologist almost as soon as any problem occurs.
“When the teacher has a problem with a child, instead of working on it together and with the parents, the child is recommended to visit the psychologist which to my mind is a bit extreme. It’s yet another expense for parents when half the time the child just needs to be given some attention in class.”
