Troika’s neoliberal recipes damage and downgrade education
Statement of Christos Christofides, Head of Education Department of the C.C. of AKEL
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 6th May 2014, Nicosia
Today the Ministry of Education organized a presentation of the World Bank’s reports with the obvious aim of reassuring everyone that the reports are not binding, but the presentation in the end revealed the truth:
– The Anastasiades government has undertaken a clear commitment in the new “updated” Memorandum of November to promote changes in education on the basis of the dangerous proposals of the World Bank report.
– Any changes that will be discussed will be on the basis of the unacceptable World Bank reports.
– Today the Minister also announced the time-schedules. In June, deliberately after the European elections, a dialogue on the basis of reports by the World Bank will commence for the changes the government has pledged to impose by the end of the year.
– He clarified that the Ministry of Education for over a year has been discussing and elaborating together the content of the reports with the World Bank, while everyone else was deliberately kept in the dark.
As we have for months been warning, it is clear that we are entering a process whereby the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in education will be imposed, together with the Anastasiades government which characterizes these policies as its ideological and political manifesto.
Once again AKEL warns teachers, parents, students and all involved parties in education that the tsunami of neoliberal impositions that the Ministry of Education and the World Bank are preparing for Education will damage and downgrade the public school system, our children’s education, especially of the poor and vulnerable strata, and will drive labour relations back decades.
We express our disappointment at the position of the other political forces, which either agree (like Democratic Rally party) or through their silence for months now are covering up and concealing the machinations of the Ministry of Education.
