Whom you know, not what you know

Students in Cyprus

Teachers in Cyprus state schools get a pretty cushy deal, really. 

Students in the UK

They teach 26.5 contact hours a week.  Their working day ends at 1.35 p.m., after which they’re free to go home, although most moonlight on the side with private tutorials after a big lunch and a siesta.  The academic year runs from early September to late May during which they get two weeks holiday at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, three months in the summer, plus national public holidays - about one every month. 

Meanwhile, while employed, there’s sick pay, maternity pay, a marriage grant, and work-related injuries benefits.  The mandatory retirement age for Cypriot state teachers is 60 for both sexes, but early retirement is common, permitted at 45 (pensions suspended until 55).  If service spans 33.3 years [why this strange fraction?] or longer, pensions amount to 50% of the final salary, plus a lump sum gratuity, from 4.7 to 5.2 times the annual pension.  Pensioned teachers may work privately and earn incomes without prejudice to their pensions. 

Not bad, eh?

Source:  Alejandro Sergio Simone of the IMF, ‘The Cypriot Pension System:  Issues & Reforms Options’ in the Cyprus Economic Policy Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 3-34 (2011). 

Every year thousands of Cypriot university graduates file applications with the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture.  Only an undergraduate degree is required, no teaching qualifications or experience necessary. 

 

The catch is there is a waiting list of about 25 years. 

Unless you have μέσα ('mesa', contacts).  

A cousin of mine who graduated in “English” Literature from an Athenian university in the late 1970s eventually got her state teaching position in Cyprus in the mid-2000s.  She was in her mid-40s. By that time she couldn’t remember a single book she’d read at university and could barely speak English.  She now teaches English Language at a state secondary school in Cyprus.   

The Cyprus Mail’s editorial column today highlights the endemic corruption within the Cypriot state education system.  Forget meritocracy – a First Class Honours degree from The Russell Group and years of experience won’t get you a job.   Nepotism abounds.  

Grant, Lord, to all students to love and know that which is worth knowing, to praise that which pleases you most, to value that which is most precious to you, and to dislike whatever is evil in your eyes. 

– Thomas a Kempis