TWO teachers were arrested at their home yesterday for providing illegal private lessons to their state school students.
Police told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that at 5.45pm, Nicosia police bearing a court order investigated the home of two state school teachers. The police found the teachers tutoring two students in mathematics and physics.
Evidence was found and photographed in the house, which the police clarified as being textbooks and teaching aides.
The two teachers were subsequently arrested and taken to police headquarters for questioning. The students and their parents also went to the police station. After making a written statement, the teachers were released at 9.30pm, with a court date pending.
No state school teachers in Cyprus are currently allowed to offer unlicensed private lessons to students after school. In November 2004, President Tassos Papadopoulos launched a campaign, still ongoing, to root out illegal private lessons.
Unlicensed private lessons for one child are estimated to cost around £100/week, which amounts to £400/month or £5,000/year. The illegal income is obviously untaxed, a sum estimated by the Education Ministry to top £50 million per year.
Teachers found guilty of offering unlicensed private lessons face fines and possible imprisonment.
But President of the House Education Committee Nicos Tornaritis told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that that the essential issue was to improve the public education system.
“I believe that many things must happen to improve the quality of education before we pursue punishment.”
In August, the Education Ministry launched an 11-point plan to combat the epidemic of illegal after-school lessons.
The plan included: creating a task force to oversee the behaviour of the teachers and ensure they do not engage in unlicensed after-school lessons; eliminating one of the two series of exams that graduating students take; ensuring that the exams are comparable in substance and in difficulty to the material given over the course of the year; purchasing new textbooks and materials; raising the level of training that teachers must have; adjusting the school year so that students have more time to study for their final exams; and improving the state-run after-school programmes, which students can enrol in if they want extra help.
President of the Parents’ Association Artemis Aspris told the Mail that the campaign may have reduced the number of illegal private lessons “to some extent”.
“Some students are now going for after-school lessons instead of private ones,” Aspris said. “And teachers feel that there are now consequences if they teach after school lessons so that has led to a reduction too.”
But Aspris noted it is “difficult to stop” private school lessons as they are so entrenched in public life.
“Private lessons have become a culture, a way of thinking in Cyprus.”
