There are generations that simply pass through time. And there are generations that seize it, shape it, and refuse to let it pass unchanged. Class ES26 of The English School Nicosia belongs — firmly and forever — to the second kind.
As the school celebrates its graduating class of 2026, the world beyond those gates would do well to stop and pay attention. Because what these young people have done is not ordinary. They walked into one of the most turbulent eras in the history of education — and they walked out not merely intact, but extraordinary.
Born Into a Storm: The COVID Generation
When ES26 began their senior school journey in 2019–2020, the world promptly closed its doors. The COVID-19 pandemic did not simply disrupt their schooling — it tore down the very scaffolding of growing up: the classrooms, the friendships, the ordinary moments between lessons that quietly shape who we become.
For two formative years, these students learned through screens. They built friendships across fibre-optic cables. They sat examinations in the same rooms where they slept, ate, and grieved the childhood that should have been theirs. Older students — those who graduated between 2020 and 2023 — still speak of the gaps that pandemic education left behind. ES26 were younger. More vulnerable. And yet they did not stumble. They adapted. They rose.
The school was finding its way alongside them — no ready-made platform, no blueprint, no map. Just a community that refused to give up on one another. And ES26 were never passengers in that struggle. They were at the heart of it: patient with their teachers, fierce in holding their community together, relentless in pressing forward.
“They did not merely survive the pandemic. They studied through it, grew through it, and ultimately, excelled through it.”
The Numbers That Tell a Story
Make no mistake: these are not ordinary results. The university placements secured by Class ES26 are not just personal victories — they are a collective triumph that has redrawn the map of what a Cypriot school can achieve:
• Offers from the University of Cambridge
• Offers from Imperial College London
• Offers from Columbia University, New York
• Offers from Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan
• 10% of the entire year group admitted to Medicine programmes at leading institutions
And there is more. Members of ES26 are heading to University College London, Trinity College Dublin, King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, and a constellation of other world-ranked universities.
Pause on those numbers. Five Oxbridge and Ivy League placements. Four offers from Imperial College and Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi. A medicine acceptance rate of one in ten. These are figures the most elite schools in Britain and Europe would announce with fireworks. From an island of a million people — still carrying the scars of a pandemic — they are nothing short of historic.
“Excellence is not a destination. It is the standard by which you measure every single day. ES26 did not chase excellence — they embodied it.”
Values Met, Exceeded, Transcended
For decades, The English School has stood on a foundation of values: Excellence, Integrity, Respect, and Community. Plenty of students learn to recite them. ES26 chose to live them.
They understood something that takes most people a lifetime to grasp: excellence is not a solo act. It is a responsibility to the people beside you. They supported one another across seven years in ways that defied every competitive pressure of a high-achieving environment — naming each other’s mistakes without cruelty, celebrating each other’s wins without envy, standing shoulder to shoulder when the ground felt least certain beneath them.
They showed what leadership looks like long before anyone handed them a title.
When the acting Headteacher sat with them at the start of their final year and asked for a promise — of conduct, of effort, of respect — they did not nod politely and move on. They listened. They took it to heart. They delivered, in every honest and difficult conversation that followed. That is not academic excellence. That is character.
Yet perhaps the most profound measure of this class’s character was not found in any examination result or university offer. It was found in how they carried one of the heaviest burdens a young person can bear.
During their years at The English School, ES26 experienced the devastating loss of their dear friend and colleague, Ioanna Skordis. Her passing left a wound in the heart of the class that no academic achievement could heal. And yet, in the face of that grief, ES26 showed the world what genuine community looks like. They held together. They supported one another through the darkest of days. They stood beside Ioanna’s family and teachers, offering comfort at a time when
they themselves were in pain. They ensured, with quiet and steadfast determination, that her memory would not simply be preserved — but honoured.
Ioanna was a young woman of talent, warmth, and promise — and Class ES26 is immensely proud of who she was and all that she achieved. Her spirit is woven into the fabric of this class. Every distinction earned, every university place secured, every act of kindness shown by a member of ES26 carries her with it. She is not absent from this story. She is part of it — permanently, and with great honour.
The members of ES26 have made a silent but solemn promise: that in every achievement, every milestone, and every chapter of their professional lives, they will carry Ioanna’s memory forward. She will be present in their successes. She will be remembered in their service. She will be honoured in the fullness of the lives they go on to lead.
“To carry grief with grace, and loss with love — that is the mark not of students, but of remarkable human beings. ES26 has shown us both.”
Non sibi sed scholae.
Not for oneself, but for the school.
Citizens of the World: The Peru Experience
Results alone never define a generation. What truly sets ES26 apart is that they refused to look only inward. They looked out — past the exam halls, past the offers, past the comfortable borders of their own world.
They travelled to Peru. Not to add a line to a CV, but to give something real. They taught. They listened. They placed themselves in communities far from everything familiar and chose to be useful. And in doing so, they grew an emotional intelligence no curriculum can deliver: real empathy, discomfort willingly embraced, service freely given.
They came home not as tourists who had seen the world, but as young people who had begun to understand their place within it — and the responsibility that understanding carries.
But here is what matters most. They were pioneers. There was no path. No tradition to follow. They went first — uncertain of what waited for them, certain only that going was right. And in going, they built something that had never existed: a road for others to walk.
And others are already walking it. Because ES26 went to Peru, the students who come after will go too — further, bolder, more confident, because the trail is blazed. That is the mark of true pioneers. They don’t just finish the journey. They make every future journey possible.
This is not a memory you leave behind. It is a living tradition you have founded — one that will grow with every class that follows in your footsteps, carrying forward the spirit of service and curiosity that you so courageously established.
“They did not simply experience the world. They opened a door for every student who will come after them to do the same.”
A Lesson to the Adults: On Inclusion and Maturity
In boardrooms and parliaments across Cyprus and Europe, adults still hold earnest seminars on inclusion. They write policies. They hire consultants to teach them how to make room for difference.
ES26 never needed the seminar.
For this generation, what adults call “diversity” was simply life. The full spectrum of identity, ability, and background was never something to manage or tolerate — it was the texture of seven shared years, woven into ordinary friendship. They didn’t celebrate difference as an idea. They lived it, instinctively, without ceremony. In that, they are more mature than many of the adults who will now line up to mentor them. The truth is, they have a great deal to teach us.
“Where adults discuss embracing difference, ES26 already live it. For them, it was never differentiation — it was simply normality.”
Setting a New Standard: For The English School, for Cyprus, for Education Itself
What ES26 achieved does not belong to them alone, or even to The English School alone. It belongs to the whole story of Cypriot education — and it throws down a challenge that story can no longer ignore.
For the students who follow, the bar is higher now. Not as a weight, but as an invitation. ES26 proved that the bar was never fixed in the first place — it was only ever a measure of what determined, supported, genuinely cared-for young people can do.
For the teachers, ES26 is a reminder of why the profession exists: not to pour in information, but to unlock potential. These students earned every result — and they did it alongside teachers who believed in them long before the results made believing easy.
For the school’s management, ES26 is vindication. Every investment in infrastructure, in values, in an education both rigorous and humane — this class is that investment repaid in full, and then some.
And for Cyprus itself, ES26 is both a triumph and a dare. This is what becomes possible when a school pairs the right values with the right support and trusts its students to rise. The only question left is whether the rest of the country is ready to take that lesson seriously.
To Every Remarkable Member of Class ES26
To every one of the 163 other extraordinary young people who share the distinction of being the Class ES26: this is not a goodbye. It is a send-off.
You were denied the graduation every student dreams of — the hall, the applause, the procession, the photographs at the gates. Circumstances took that ritual from you. But no circumstance can touch what you actually built across seven hard-won years: a record of achievement, a reputation for integrity, and a character forged in one of the most genuinely difficult educational environments in living memory.
So hear this clearly, on a day when no ceremony can take place:
A ceremony celebrates an achievement.
A legacy outlasts every celebration.
You are about to step into universities, and into a world that will test you in ways you cannot yet imagine. There will be moments of doubt. Problems no textbook will answer. Days when the confidence that carried you through seven years here feels a thousand miles away.
On those days, remember exactly who you are.
You are the generation that learned without classrooms — and still learned more than anyone dared expect.
You are the generation that went to Peru when you could have stayed home, and lit the way for everyone who follows.
You are the generation that kept its word when forgetting would have been easy.
You are the generation that treated difference as normal while the world was still pretending that was hard.
One day, ES26 will fill the ranks of doctors, scientists, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs, lawyers, innovators, and leaders. But whatever path you choose, you have already done something rare. You have become the living proof of everything your School set out to teach.
So to the Class of ES26:
Be proud of what you have built.
Be proud of what you have overcome.
Be proud of the example you have set.
You have honoured your School, your families, your teachers, and yourselves.
And above all, you have shown the world a truth most people spend a lifetime chasing: that excellence is not something you achieve.
It is something you become.
Well done, ES26.
You have set a standard that will inspire generations yet to come.
“Class ES26 — you did not merely meet the standard of The English School. You rewrote it. Now go and rewrite the world.”
“Excellence”
Class ES26 — The Most Successful Graduating Class
