A child jumped from the second-floor window of his school on Monday after learning that he had failed all his classes except for foreign languages, as he does not speak Turkish.

The child attended an unnamed Turkish Cypriot school, but is not himself Turkish Cypriot.

Turkish Cypriot ‘education minister’ Nazim Cavusoglu described the incident as “unfortunate” when addressing the Turkish Cypriot legislature.

“We have been following the matter from the very beginning. The child in question is not in a life-threatening condition. A CT scan is being performed to check for fractures and dislocations. We send our best wishes for a speedy recovery,” he said.

The incident comes with fears having arisen in recent years regarding the influx of children from abroad to the north who do not speak Turkish, with Biray Hamzaogullari, a representative of opposition party the CTP, having said that around 300 of the 700 children at the Bekirpasha high school in Trikomo “do not speak Turkish as their first language”.

He called for “preparatory classes” for children who move to the north and enter the Turkish Cypriot public school system to ensure that they speak Turkish to an adequate degree before entering mainstream classes.

Cavusoglu, however, had come up with a different plan, introducing legislation which would have required all non-Turkish Cypriot children to independently attain certificates proving good knowledge of the Turkish language before being allowed to attend lessons.

This plan was lambasted by Turkish Cypriot teachers’ trade union Ktos.

Cavusoglu’s plans were eventually dropped, while preparatory classes have not yet been introduced by the authorities.