Mother haunts Cypriot classroom
Four months after schools opened in Cyprus, teachers and Education Ministry officials were still trying yesterday to get rid of an increasingly incongruous presence in one first-grade classroom. According to reports in the Cypriot press, the Education Ministry has set up a team of school inspectors, psychologists and teachers to try and gently draw an anxious mother away from her first-grade daughter by means of a gradual withdrawal program. Parents are allowed to attend classes with their children for a short while when they start school, to ensure that they settle down all right. But this one still insists on accompanying her child – who is eight years old, as Cyprus allows parents, under certain circumstances, to keep their children on at nursery school. The legal age for starting primary school is five years and eight months. The Education Ministry’s primary education director, Grigoris Hoplaros, said the mother had not been banned from the classroom so far, in the hope that she will see the error of her ways.
