During the academic year 2012-2013, I taught French at Girne American University (GAU) Prep School, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That was my first full-time teaching with primary students (Reception to year 5). I loved it and learnt a lot from it. It was evident the children enjoyed the French course and learned well. No matter how much students achieve at GAU, they can be congratulated from doing so, as GAU provides a very mediocre, very poorly-stimulating education.

The main reason for that is that, from top management to teachers, providing students with a good education is not a priority. The top management really considers the “GAU family of schools” – the nursery school, the Prep School (English-speaking primary school section), the Elementary school (the Turkish-speaking primary school section), the Middle and High schools - as a profit-making institution. Managers are not educators. They just want parents to be happy and provide them with day-care-centers for their children and yield to all their desires, even if these parents’ desires have nothing to do with education.

Few teachers are qualified to teach at GAU. Most of the teachers have a degree in one academic field, but the vast majority of them did not get any training as teachers. Most of them did not study pedagogy or children psychology/development for example. Students (especially in the upper grades) are “kings” and “queens”, they are those who run the school. Teachers do not know how to handle them or they are afraid of doing so as the management does not support them.The non-academic staff is not concerned at all about education. Basic rules of hygiene and security are not respected, and no attention is given to children who are considered merely as a source of money.

Although schools are lucrative businesses, there is no money for teaching material and managers are extremely reluctant to invest in educational resources : there is no teaching material available for teachers, from board markers to, obviously, computers, smartboards or any meaningful educational project. The Prep school library is total chaos and has no librarian. My ownFrench classroom had not enough tables and chairs for all my students. In addition, there are no proper curricula, no induction programs for teachers, internal training session are rare and their quality is very poor as the management itself is not qualified for their jobs.
A handful of teachers are well-qualified and despaired to see the teaching strategies and teaching of their colleagues. It would seem that the most important priority at GAU is to yield to parents’ desires, to management’s desires, and not to ask any kind of unsettling questions about the school.The “GAU family of schools” has outdated ways of teaching and working. Needless to say that the ICT level of teachers and therefore students is extremely poor.

There are no incentives for teachers : salaries are very low. Teachers’ salaries range from 700 euros to 1500 euros a month. Most of them get below 1000 euros, and a handful more than 1000 euros, while the cost of living in the TRNC is only slightly less than an average French city.
The housing allowance is 150 euros a month for all teachers, while renting a flat or a house costs 250 sterling pounds at the very minimum.
Salaries are paid late and are exclusive to one bank that has been chosen for teachers by the school. Pay slips are non-existent and money is known to be taken from the teachers’ accounts for extravagant reasons.Contracts have no value and are breached frequently. The Human Resources (HR) department lures teachers with promises, but once teachers start working at GAU, they soon realize the reality is not what they had been told.

The “Human” Resources department is anything but human. The staff working in this department has no consideration for teachers except for their “friends” or relatives. Incidentally, mostlocal/native teachers and staff are recruited, not according to their skills, but to their relations to the school management. The HR department, their utter disorganization, their lies and despise for people is notorious amongst teachers and the cause of much stress and many sleepless nights.
Holidays are barely existent and distributed in a discriminatory way. Racism is highly felt by teachers coming from Africa or Asia in particular, and single women are ostracized. There is no equality of treatment of any kind and “divide to rule” is the norm to treat people. New teachers feel consistently insecure as they can be sacked any time if they do not play the GAU game.

Playing the GAU game means for example that teachers must give all students good grades and comments, no matter what their actual results are. Grades and comments are changed to satisfy parents, even if it means that a manager will bypass a teacher to write the grades himself/herself. Students and parents are consequently cheated. Parents should know that paying fees to get their children at GAU is tantamount to buying their sons and daughters good grades, even if these grades do not reflect at all their levels.
Paradoxically, while the GAU “family of schools” motto is “The right to be safe, to be respected and to learn”, teachers and students are not safe and respected at all. Those who do not adapt to the shabby GAU institution suffer from high stress, insecurity, instability, loneliness, absence of recognition and contempt.

Logically, students in turn work in an unsafe, unprofessional environment. Their desire to study is not respected and, as most of the time they do not realize how little they learn at GAU, only the luckiest students learn the most important thing that has to be learnt quickly at GAU : to leave and find a better, a proper school.

Eric Bétend
Former French teacher at GAU Prep School