The Education Minister-evidently unfit to handle the country’s education affairs

Statement by AKEL C.C. Spokesperson Giorgos Koukoumas

8 September 2022, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

The new incident at a specific secondary school in Larnaca, with the same Headmaster again as the main protagonist, is provoking outrage. On the first day of school, the principal decided to expel, without previously even making a recommendation, dozens of school pupils of the first class of the high school for their haircut. This is the same principal who a few months ago did not give diplomas to pupils because he did not approve of their hairstyle at the graduation ceremony. These practices are blatantly anti-educational and outside the spirit of school rules themselves.

These authoritarian practices and phenomena find fertile ground in the provocative cover given to them by the Minister of Education, within the general spirit of conservatism and delaying tactics that characterises the government on matters related to education and beyond. The Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Cyprus herself has complained that the Minister has not bothered to respond to her letter about the incident at last year’s graduation ceremony at the same school. This time, Education Minister P.Prodromou initially denied that suspensions were imposed on the pupils. He subsequently attempted to attack the organized parents who had reacted. And finally, he went so far as to draw a parallel between schools and a military camp yesterday, speaking to a television station.

The Ministry of Education, instead of playing advocate to such practices like this principal’s, should be dealing with the real problems education is facing, which are not pupil’s hair. But when the Minister of Education is steeped in backward thinking and imagines schools as camps, he is self-evidently unfit to handle our country’s education.