Our education needs a change of course so it fulfill society’s aspirations

 

Statement by AKEL MP Christos Christofides following the examination of the 2023 Budget of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth in the Parliamentary Finance Committee

25 November 2022, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

The Anastasiades-DISY government has, unfortunately, failed in the field of education.

We do not have an education system that fulfills the dreams of all our children, but instead we have a system that often crushes their dreams. We do not have an education system that enables our children to develop their potential and skills.  Instead, we have a system which, due to the government ruling force’s policy decisions, is a system of intensive process for teachers and students to constantly chase the covering of the material for continuous examinations. It is a system that makes children not love school and doesn’t make them happy at school, while both parents and pupils run around in the afternoons to tutorials and private lessons.

It is a situation that we are living in and which has been deteriorated in recent years. This didn’t happen overnight. It is a process that adheres to an industrial philosophy, let me say, that the government ruling forces have about the education system. It’s just like the situation in factories, where productivity is measured constantly. Therefore, at school, students are turned into cogs, measured constantly by their performance.

From there onwards, we’re talking about a government that has clashed head-on over the years with the greatest asset we have in schools, including our pupils and teachers.

This is the government that forced 10,000 teachers to take to the streets.

This is the government that has turned 5,000 teachers from one moment to the next from the status of working people to employees through the purchase of services system and has ignored all the court decisions that vindicate these teachers.

This is the government that has rejected the draft bill that we as AKEL submitted to solve the problem of contracted teachers.

This is the government that does not discuss anything with the teachers’ trade union organisations, especially on the major issues that we have before us.

It is the government that is opening a window for the privatisation of compulsory public pre-primary education with its voucher policy. The proposal tabled by the government ruling forces that because of transitional construction building problems, they will give vouchers to kindergarten children so that they can choose where they will attend or where they can find kindergartens to attend, is a logic which, if left unchecked, may well be extended tomorrow to High school and Secondary school and Primary school and turn public free education into an education of vouchers.

It is the government that has particularly hurt children with disabilities. We have been waiting for ten years for the modernization of the legislation on special education. No initiative has been taken to date. Experts were called in, the Republic of Cyprus paid a lot of money and ten years later, no modernisation of the legislation has occurred. Instead, it is taking us back in time with the ceiling it has placed on escorts of children with disabilities. In other words, it gives a number of escorts, which must be distributed to children with disabilities regardless of their problem and their needs.

Therefore, bearing this overall picture in mind, we must once again express our disappointment at the course that developments on education have taken in this country over the last ten years.

Cyprus has wonderful assets. We have young children with an appetite. We have teachers with excellent studies and potential. We have parents, the vast majority of whom make the education of their children their top priority. Unfortunately, however, we do not have the education system we deserve and that’s precisely we need to change course.