Invest in public education
Statement by AKEL MP Andros Kafkalias
13 October 2022, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
Instead of investing in public education to cover the needs of extending compulsory free pre-primary education from the age of four, with funds that it is anyway shifting on to the backs of the people, the government chooses to subsidise private education and in doing so regenerating cheap labour. Instead of using the €12 million grant from the 2021-2026 Recovery and Resilience Fund to invest in the necessary infrastructures and staffing of public kindergartens, with the simultaneous strengthening of the public school system, the government chooses to subsidise tuition fees in private kindergartens.
The same concerns on the occasion of a relevant bill tabled before the relevant Parliamentary Committee are already being expressed by educational organizations and other parties.
AKEL denounces the “voucher”-type policies announced by the ruling DISY party that are being implemented by its government as an evolution of the philosophy for the privatisation of education, that undermines the public school system and which was and must remain the backbone of our education system.
