AN increase in the number of costly illegal after-school tutors has prompted members of the Parents’ Association to meet the Education Minister to hash out plans for a better public school system.
Last November, President Tassos Papadopoulos launched a campaign, still ongoing, to root out illegal private lessons. No teachers in public schools in Cyprus are currently allowed to offer unlicensed private lessons to students after school.
As part of the crackdown, which included raids, the police arrested several after-school teachers in January. The move angered members of the Teachers’ Union OELMEK, who felt the government was taking draconian measures that were more appropriate for hardened criminals than schoolteachers.
In order to tackle this problem of illegal lessons, over 400 parents in Nicosia and 300 parents in Limassol met with Education Minister Pefkios Georgiades. These meetings are motivated by a desire to improve the public school system, which the Parents’ Association sees as the root of the private lessons conundrum.
President of the Parents’ Association Elias Demetriou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that unlicensed private lessons for one child cost £100/week, which amounts to £400/month or £5,000/year. This means that private lessons for a single child, let alone for two or three, are a major financial strain on the parents. The illegal income is obviously untaxed, a sum estimated to total over £30 million per year.
Demetriou said that one reason so many parents were hiring private tutors for their children is that the public schools were not of the quality they should be. Since the educational needs of their children are not met in school, they resort to after school lessons. But ideally, Demetriou suggested, “these lessons should take place within the public school curriculum”.
Another cause for the rise in private tutors is the increased competition for university placement. This too can be addressed by raising public school standards, as any such improvement would better the odds of students gaining university admission.
The changes that the parents proposed were not limited to secondary school. Changes also need to be made in primary school, Demetriou said, because the difficult transition between primary and secondary school leads to parents hiring private tutors.
Education Minister Pefkios Georgiades was not available for questions. He will field questions about his meeting with the Parents Association at a news conference today. There he will also outline the measures that the Education Ministry intends to take to end the private lesson debacle.
These are some of the suggestions the Parents’ Association offered to the Education Minister:
* Ensure that the Final Exams are comparable in difficulty to any tests and assignments that are given to the students earlier in the year.
* Increase the number of positions in Greek universities that are available to Cypriot high school graduates. Currently, seven per cent of the positions in Greek Universities are reserved for Cypriots. Through negotiations this number could become 10 per cent.
* Purchase new textbooks and modernise the curriculum.
* Fire any teachers who prove to be lazy and incompetent at their jobs.
* Change the criteria for hiring teachers. This may include requiring a Masters or PhD degree of teachers and implementing entrance examinations for teachers.
