Cyprus’s Education Ministry has acknowledged that services responsible for preventing and tackling violence and delinquent behaviour in schools need more staff, as reports and official data point to a rise in incidents.
Education Minister Athena Michaelidou made the admission in a written response to a parliamentary question from AKEL MP Christos Christofides, chairman of the House Human Rights Committee.
The response provides a detailed picture of staffing across five services responsible for supporting schools, revealing shortages that affect their ability to respond promptly to incidents and carry out preventive work.
Particular concerns surround the Educational Psychology Service, where staffing levels were rated “very low” in terms of adequacy, and the Immediate Intervention Team, which is facing growing requests for assistance from schools.
Christofides had asked the ministry to provide details of the staffing, responsibilities and operational capacity of each service involved in preventing and managing school violence, and whether staffing levels were sufficient for them to carry out their duties effectively and promptly.
In her response, Michaelidou identified five services:
- Educational Psychology Service
- Counselling and Career Education Service
- Health Education and Citizenship Committee
- Observatory on School Violence
- Immediate Intervention Team
The minister acknowledged the importance of their work, saying the services support and strengthen schools every day to help provide a safe environment that promotes emotional wellbeing and allows pupils to learn without disruption.
However, she also recognised that additional permanent staff or personnel seconded from other positions would enable the services to respond more quickly and deal more effectively with incidents of violence and delinquent behaviour.
Staffing shortages across five school support services
Official figures submitted by the ministry reveal the staffing situation and operational challenges facing each service.
Educational Psychology Service: Heavy workload limits prevention
The Educational Psychology Service has 52 permanent staff, including 49 educational psychologists working in the service and three employees in management positions.
It also employs 19 staff on indefinite-term contracts and five on fixed-term contracts.
Two senior educational psychologist posts remain vacant within management, while another educational psychologist position is unfilled because duties have been assigned to the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute.
The service supports all levels of public education, as well as private schools where requests have been submitted through the relevant District Committees for Special Education.
Its work covers pupils, parents and teachers through individual support for learning, emotional, social and adjustment difficulties, alongside preventive interventions, workshops and programmes for entire school populations or specific groups.
Its main responsibilities include psychological assessment, counselling, mental health promotion, training for teachers and parents, and crisis management.
However, the ministry rated satisfaction with the service’s staffing levels as very low.
District offices in Limassol and Paphos do not have a senior educational psychologist because of management staffing shortages. Educational psychologists are covering those responsibilities instead.
At the same time, the high volume of requests for pupil assessments leaves psychologists with little opportunity to undertake preventive work in schools.
The ministry warned that without sufficient time to invest in prevention, children’s psychological and educational needs remain unmet.
“The heavy workload of both management and frontline staff undermines the quality of the work provided and leaves insufficient capacity for the necessary supervision of operations at both levels,” Michaelidou said.
“The lack of a proper hierarchical structure creates additional problems because there is no incentive for career progression.”
Counselling and Career Education Service: Teachers covering up to three schools
The Counselling and Career Education Service has a reported total workforce of 234 people.
The ministry’s breakdown lists 156 permanent counselling and career education teachers, 15 permanent teachers serving probationary periods, 40 teachers on contracts or indefinite-term employment arrangements, and 14 seconded teachers.
It also identifies 11 counselling teachers assigned to central and district education offices, two of whom also work in schools.
The service combines personal counselling with educational and career guidance, helping pupils and young people identify their needs, interests and abilities, cope with difficulties and make informed decisions about their lives, education and careers.
Its work includes developing self-awareness, confidence, decision-making skills and the ability to handle personal, family and social difficulties.
It also supports pupils’ adjustment to school, educational and social development, and career planning.
Other responsibilities include producing educational materials, participating in national lifelong guidance initiatives, contributing to ministry committees and handling administrative matters relating to counselling and career education.
Michaelidou said staffing had improved in recent years, with the additional personnel helping increase the counselling time available relative to pupil numbers.
However, the specialised nature of the service makes it difficult to provide consistent and balanced coverage across all schools.
In several cases, a single counselling teacher must cover two or even three schools.
As a result, counsellors are not present at each school every day, and the support they provide is more fragmented.
The ministry said further recruitment, combined with better planning for staff deployment, could improve continuity, availability and equality of access to counselling services.
Health Education and Citizenship Committee: Just three staff
The Health Education and Citizenship Committee operates with three staff members.
Its main responsibility is coordinating the Education Ministry’s work under the National Strategy for Addressing Addictions 2021–2028, in cooperation with the Cyprus National Addictions Authority and other relevant organisations.
Within schools, its work focuses primarily on prevention and strengthening the protective role of education against addiction and other risky behaviour.
The committee helps implement established prevention, management and referral procedures.
These include the cooperation protocol for preventing and addressing illegal addictive substances in schools and the protocol for referring pupils displaying addictive behaviours to specialised programmes.
It also coordinates support for children from vulnerable groups, funding their participation in creative activities outside school hours.
During the current school year, the committee is working with the Cyprus National Addictions Authority to introduce a monitoring form in schools to strengthen preventive policies on smoking, vaping and addictive behaviours.
Michaelidou acknowledged that the committee needs additional staff because of its growing workload and wide range of responsibilities.
She said reinforcement would help it respond more effectively to schools’ increasing needs while expanding and systematically monitoring preventive programmes and interventions.
Observatory on School Violence: Nine staff responsible for monitoring incidents
The Observatory on School Violence has nine staff members: one coordinator and eight officers.
It provides training seminars, educational programmes and workshops for teachers across all levels of education.
The observatory collects, records and analyses information about the extent and different forms of violence in schools.
It also gathers quantitative and qualitative data on effective practices for preventing and tackling violence and delinquent behaviour.
Another part of its work involves cooperation with teachers, social partners, government departments, non-governmental organisations and other bodies.
It submits recommendations to help shape policy on preventing and managing school violence.
The observatory continues to provide a range of important training seminars during the current school year.
However, Michaelidou said the need to strengthen its staffing was clear.
Immediate Intervention Team: Rising incidents put pressure on 12 officers
The Immediate Intervention Team has 12 officers working on full-time or part-time secondments across Cyprus.
Its role is to provide prompt support to schools dealing with serious incidents of violence and extreme delinquent behaviour.
These include vandalism, physical assaults, aggression, serious refusal to follow school rules or instructions, conflicts, group-related incidents and fights involving individual pupils or groups.
The team’s main responsibility is to help schools manage serious incidents while supporting pupils enrolled in its Alternative Attendance Programme.
The aim is to address negative attitudes and behaviour and improve the wider school environment.
When called to intervene, the team helps develop, implement and monitor an action plan tailored to the school’s problems.
The plan includes educational and administrative measures, a description of the problem, clearly defined responsibilities and implementation deadlines agreed by those involved.
The team coordinates and supports the plan’s implementation and helps adjust it when necessary.
It works with school management, teaching staff, secondary education counsellors, educational psychologists, inspectors, parents and guardians.
It also cooperates with other relevant services and authorities to ensure that incidents are addressed through a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach.
However, the ministry said the rising number of incidents in recent years, along with increasing requests for intervention from schools, has made additional staffing necessary.
“The continuing increase in incidents of school violence and delinquent behaviour observed in recent years, and the resulting rise in requests for intervention submitted by schools to the Immediate Intervention Team, make it necessary to increase the number of seconded officers so that the service can respond more promptly and effectively,” the ministry’s response said.
Fotini Tsiridou proposes law to tackle organised cyberbullying
Cyprus’s parliament is examining a bill proposed by House Legal Affairs Committee chairwoman Fotini Tsiridou aimed at tackling serious online harassment and coordinated intimidation campaigns.
The proposal would introduce new criminal offences covering online and social media activities that target individuals and their families.
It seeks to strengthen the existing 2021 legislation on protection against harassment and stalking by addressing newer forms of online targeting made possible by technological developments.
Two proposed offences are at the centre of the legislation.
The first concerns organised online targeting.
To establish the offence, prosecutors would have to prove prior agreement or other coordinated action, knowledge of the organised nature of the conduct and a substantial contribution by the accused to behaviour constituting an offence.
The proposal makes clear that multiple people expressing the same or similar opinions about someone would not automatically constitute organised targeting.
Instead, there must be a shared purpose to harass or intimidate a specific individual.
The second offence concerns the malicious publication of information that can identify or locate someone, a practice internationally known as doxxing.
This would cover the unauthorised publication of information such as residential addresses, current or usual locations, personal telephone numbers, workplace details or information identifying underage family members.
For the conduct to become a criminal offence, the publication would have to be intended to cause fear or harassment, or be objectively capable of exposing the person concerned or their family to a real and serious risk.
The bill would not replace existing data protection legislation.
Instead, it would specifically address cases where personal information is used to intimidate, harass or expose people to danger.
Safeguards for freedom of expression
The proposal places particular emphasis on protecting freedom of expression.
It includes explicit safeguards for political criticism, investigative journalism, satire, academic and scientific expression, and participation in public debate.
Speaking after the latest meeting of the House Legal Affairs Committee, Tsiridou stressed that the bill was not intended to criminalise disagreement, heated debate or unwelcome criticism.
“Lawful criticism is protected. Criminally punishable harassment is dealt with on the basis of specific elements that must be proven,” she said.
Tsiridou also argued that public officials must accept greater scrutiny and robust criticism.
She said freedom of expression and protection of individuals’ rights must coexist through an appropriate balance.
The proposal provides for graduated penalties and aggravating circumstances.
These include using fake or multiple accounts, automated systems to distribute content on a large scale, or continuing unlawful conduct despite a court order or formal warning from a competent authority.
It would also strengthen judicial powers, allowing courts to order unlawful online conduct to stop and require the removal of, or restrictions on access to, content controlled by the person involved where that content appears, on initial examination, to form part of the alleged harassment.
Tsiridou welcomed the response of the relevant institutions, saying the Attorney-General’s Office, Justice Ministry and Cyprus Bar Association had supported the proposal.
Christos Christofides: National strategy needs measurable targets and accountability
AKEL MP Christos Christofides has called for immediate staffing increases and a clear implementation plan to tackle school violence, arguing that government statements and isolated interventions are not enough.
In comments to Phileleftheros, Christofides said his parliamentary question had exposed serious shortcomings in the Education Ministry’s support services.
“For several years, we have insisted that violence and delinquent behaviour in schools cannot be tackled through announcements, public relations assurances and piecemeal interventions,” he said.
“What is needed is prevention, early support for children and meaningful reinforcement of the services responsible for preventing and managing these incidents.”
Christofides described the minister’s response to his parliamentary question as revealing.
“The Education Ministry itself acknowledges that the Immediate Intervention Team needs more officers because incidents of violence and requests from schools are increasing.
“It also admits that the Educational Psychology Service, the Observatory on School Violence and the Health Education and Citizenship Committee need further reinforcement,” he said.
He also highlighted the ministry’s findings concerning counselling services.
“For Counselling and Career Education, the ministry records that in several cases a single teacher covers two or even three schools, meaning they are not present every day and support is provided on a fragmented basis.
“These are not our assessments. They are the ministry’s own findings.
“When the needs are known, acknowledging them is not enough. There must be a plan, and it must be implemented.”
National strategy ‘effectively left in limbo’
Christofides also criticised the implementation of legislation intended to address violence in schools.
“Since 2023, we have been warning that the legislation on school violence was not being implemented and calling for substantial changes and enforcement.
“The law was amended in 2024, but everyday life in schools continues to show that prevention and support structures are inadequate.
“The National Strategy 2024–2028 must have measurable targets, timetables and public accountability. At present, it is effectively left in limbo.”
The MP called for immediate recruitment of permanent, specialised staff for the Immediate Intervention Team, educational psychology services and prevention programmes.
He also stressed the need to ensure that every school has regular access to psychologists and counsellors.
“Every school must have regular access to a psychologist and counsellor, clear protocols, early intervention and ongoing cooperation with social and health services.
“We also need systematic recording and assessment of incidents, as well as meaningful training for teachers and parents.
“School safety is not secured through stern government announcements and statements after every incident.
“It is secured when the state prevents problems, provides support and protects people.
“Children, teachers and families cannot wait for another announcement,” Christofides said.
