PARLIAMENT has decided to release approximately €340,000 of funding to the English School, after withholding it for a year over the Board of Directors’ alleged financial mismanagement.
English School board chairman Kyriacos Vassiliou yesterday welcomed the news, which would provide around €500 per student, noting that parliament never directly told him why they had withheld the funds.
Vassiliou said: “The funding has been arranged and the cheque is ready to be received… I was not told by the government why they withheld the funds. The board was not invited to parliament, though the parents were.”
He added: “We were not given any conditions to fulfil. All I had from parliament was a terse letter saying that our request for funding had been turned down.”
The board chairman highlighted that rather than inform the school of the reasons behind the decision to freeze the funds, parliament chose to only inform the media, alleging financial mismanagement.
Vassiliou said he heard that one condition for releasing the funds was financial mismanagement, but denied the allegations. As chairman of the board he was not aware of any mismanagement, “so how could I rectify this?” he asked.
Regarding other gripes voiced by parliament, that the board was not cooperating with the parents’ association, he said he listened to parents and was in favour of supporting them but ultimately it was the board’s responsibility to run the school, and parents should cooperate with them.
One of the more widely reported expenditures in the English School budget has been the rapprochement seminars in Ireland, to which teachers were sent to learn more about bicommunal (catholic and protestant) education.
“I take exception to (the reports) which said we sent a large number of teachers abroad, that was done before the current board was appointed in April 2008,” said Vassiliou.
Since then just one or two teachers have gone each year and costs were kept low because they stayed in student halls, he said, adding that the trips were “part and parcel of preparing teachers to do their jobs”.
Another controversial issue was the board’s decision to introduce the Muslim holy days of Bayram in the school calendar, as well as thoughts to close the school on November 15, the occasion of the breakaway state’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI).
The board cited the fact that around 12 per cent of pupils at the school are Turkish Cypriot to support its decision on Bayram holidays. Regarding November 15, it argued that the highly charged political climate led to animosity among pupils. However, it eventually backed down on the latter proposal.
