Society has an obligation to attach much more importance to children with disabilities
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 26th November 2020, Nicosia
Today the General Secretary of the C.C. of AKE, A.Kyprianou visited the Nicosia School for Special Needs and made the following statement:
“We believe that society has an obligation to give much more importance to children with disabilities and seek to formulate such conditions that will permit these children to have opportunities in their lives. Our visit here seeks precisely to convey this message. I would like to congratulate the management and staff of the School but also the Parents’ Association, because we consider that excellent work is being done here and I repeat that they are worthy of congratulations. We have made a symbolic financial contribution on behalf of AKEL, as an expression of our appreciation for the work being carried out and as a symbol act of the need for the State to provide much more support.
AKEL believes that the state has an obligation to pay much more attention to these matters. For that reason, we have for 4 years carried out a special study, which has been prepared by the Education Affairs Bureau of the Central Committee, in collaboration with all interested parties, but also experts and specialists on these matters.
Our request to the Education Minister is that he finally looks at this study which we have delivered and utilize those findings which he considers useful for the development of Education for special needs. Let me just say that we consider that the best way to address these issues is to establish a special structure in the Education Ministry with a Directorate for Education schools for special needs, so that there is a specialization. The problems children with disabilities face mustn’t get lost e.g. in the problems Secondary Education and education generally face, or in Primary education of course, in the special schools that exist and which face far more problems than the schools of specialised education.
I would once again like to congratulate the Management, the staff and the Parents’ Association for the excellent work they are doing here. The most important thing I’d like to say is that both the staff and the children are very happy and this is what we consider as essential in education, namely to create the conditions for children to be happy and not have anxiety.”
