George Kakouris
Children and adolescents in many parts of the world, including Cyprus, face real problems. Bombs rain down on Ukraine, poverty ravages Gaza, school shootings plague the USA, natural disasters devastate the poorest regions, and here in Cyprus, an entire family recently perished in a tragic house fire.
Against this backdrop, it seems somewhat surreal that an entire country would be consumed by a scandal over whether board members of a prestigious private (or semi-public) school pressured the principal to admit a student who failed the entrance exams. The controversy has triggered resignations, scathing letters, and legal wrangling, even making its way to the President and Cabinet agenda — alongside, I assume, the unanswered question of how an EU country bathed in sunshine and dotted with photovoltaic panels still burns fuel oil and schedules power cuts. No doubt the wealthy Lebanese who fled to Cyprus must be wondering why they bothered, while the less fortunate Lebanese are either denied entry or too preoccupied to question their exclusion.
the English School has always been the breeding ground of the ruling class — a fiefdom for those with inherited wealth or newfound riches, parcelled out among the loyal followers of political parties.
This affair has captured public attention precisely because the English School — or ingliglu as some older graduates from more secular backgrounds might call it — is not just another private institution. It encapsulates the imagined universe of the Cypriot classroom, the Cypriot Dream, and all the neuroses that come with it. Over the past few days, I've seen online laments about the death of meritocracy at the English School — as if the scandal is a uniquely Cypriot phenomenon, distinct from the supposedly more civilized British traditions. These comments brought to mind nostalgic reports from previous decades that likened the school to a miniature Eton for Cyprus.
While the school's reputation rests on the principle of merit-based admissions through entrance exams, that does not mean it was ever immune to the island's systemic dysfunctions. Tuition fees — at least partially affordable to the middle class — have always posed a barrier, but the bigger obstacles are the usual suspects: political patronage, pricey private tutoring to ensure the success of the privileged, and the quiet grooming of the next generation of elites.
Despite these flaws, entrance exams at the English School represented an unwritten pact between the ruling class and the middle class — and for some, the working class: that in this oligarchic society, there could be opportunities for others. The school has long symbolized the promise that with talent and hard work, anyone could succeed and influence society — whether your grandparents were moneylenders, bankers, colonial collaborators, farmers, or refugees. It was a place where, in theory, students could escape the suffocating weight of parochialism and adopt a more open worldview.
For others, however, the English School has always been the breeding ground of the ruling class — a fiefdom for those with inherited wealth or newfound riches, parcelled out among the loyal followers of political parties. And for all its pretensions, despite its name, the English School has remained a profoundly Greek institution. Turkish Cypriot students are now admitted more as a token obligation than through any genuine attempt at integration — a stark reflection of the wider failure to build a truly bicommunal society. In fact, the return of Turkish Cypriot students was another great scandal of the 21st century, igniting patriotic hysteria among those who fear the school becoming anything more than a fortress of Greek Cypriot privilege.
The fascination with this latest controversy stems from the fact that the English School has always mirrored the contradictions of modern Cypriot identity — the uneasy fusion of colonial legacy and local culture. It is a school for those who sought to rise above the shame of colonial subjugation by adopting the name of the colonizer, while never quite ceasing to be Cypriots in their habits, loyalties, and anxieties — for better or worse.
*This article was translated from its Greek original
