For decades, this newspaper has been writing about the public education system, which is exclusively designed to serve teachers, who were hired from a waiting listing without an interview and no requirement apart from a university degree.

Their teaching was never assessed, but they were guaranteed annual pay rises, promotion and less work (fewer teaching hours) with years of service. And at the end of this untaxing career, by the end of which their salary had increased by up to about 150 per cent, they received a big retirement bonus and a monthly pension that 90 per cent of the population could not even dream of.

The casualties of this teacher-centred, public education system are generations of children who have been let down unfailingly by public schools, many of them graduating with a poor education and others having private lessons in the afternoon in order to attain a basic standard of learning. While the living standards of public school teachers have been steadily rising, the educational standards of Cypriot children have been steadily falling, but nobody in Cyprus seems to be concerned.

European Commission and OECD data published this week highlighted everything that is wrong with public education. Cyprus allocated 13.2 per cent of its annual public spending in 2024 (€1.8 billion) on education compared with an EU average of 9.7 percent. In the 10-year period from 2014 to 2024 it recorded the highest increase in spending of all EU member-states. It also boasted the second highest proportion of education spending going to staff pay, while teachers received comparatively high salaries as they progress through their career, increasing by up to 149 per cent.

Despite having such well-rewarded teachers, Cypriot students perform very badly in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests that compare educational standards in different countries. In 2022 PISA, Cypriot 15-year-olds scored 418 points in maths, 381 in reading and 411 in science, whereas the EU averages were 472, 468 and 480 respectively. Worse still was that these results were lower than they were in the previous PISA survey.

Crudely put, the Cypriot taxpayer is getting a very poor service in exchange for the money being spent on public education. We are paying top money for a substandard service as the results show. The state is offering generation after generation of youths a poor education, because its only concern is to keep indolent, indifferent, demotivated, self-serving teachers happy. The most infuriating aspect of this story is that none of our politicians and none of the education ministry mandarins dare to discuss the issue, for fear of upsetting the teaching unions.

This tolerance they show is criminal, but worst of all is that Cypriot public school teachers do not care that their students are leaving school with an embarrassingly poor education.