THE ENGLISH School in Nicosia has added two extra holidays to its calendar this school year, commemorating Muslim holy days.
The English School will now be closed on the Muslim holy days of Ramazam Bayram (Eid ul Fitr) on Monday September 21, and Kurban Bayram (Eid al Adha) on November 27.
According to new headmistress Deborah Duncan, the decision was taken after “lots of discussion and debate about the school calendar and with the agreement of the school community and all the stakeholders.”
She said the aim of including the holidays in the school calendar was purely educational and to ensure that students did not miss out on lessons. “About 13 per cent of our students don’t come to school on Muslim holidays. They then miss lessons and have to catch up. The fact is that we are a multicultural school with lots of different religions.”
She emphasised that if a significant percentage of students would not be attending school on a given day then the schedule would have to be reshuffled to make allowances for that. She also quashed the unlikely rumours that the Muslim holidays would be replacing traditional Greek-Cypriot holidays.
“There will still be the same number of days in the school calendar year and no traditional holidays are being replaced” she stressed. “The two new days of holiday will be added in at the end of term.”
The autumn term at the English School this year ends on December 22, compared to December 19 in 2008-2009.
Duncan also dispelled rumours that the date on which the so-called ‘TRNC’ declared its de facto independence would also be marked as a holiday in the school calendar. In fact, the date, November 15, falls squarely in the middle of the school’s autumn half term.
“It may be that the committee included the date in half term deliberately because it is a day when a lot of our students will want to join in demonstrations and would not have come to school.
“It is all about finding a neutral line. We are a school; our field is education not politics. Our central aim is to educate. It is important to enable our students to express their views and have their voices heard but it must not impair their education.”
Students at the English School are predominantly Greek-Cypriot with a substantial number of Turkish-Cypriot students and students of other nationalities. The school began to return to its bi-communal status from 2003 onwards, after Turkish-Cypriot pupils and teachers were forced to withdraw in 1974.
Duncan said “We are not ashamed of being a multicultural school, nor are we the only one.”
