The 9 + 1 Unhealed Wounds of Education

Statement by Yiorgos Georgiou, AKEL Political Bureau member and MP

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 5 November 2018, Nicosia

The summer showers in education were overcome temporarily. The storm, almost certainly, is coming. The major issues of education remain unsolved. And the wounds plaguing the education system remain open.

When shall we talk about these problems?

• About the effective streamlining of public education, far from serving any economistic approaches. About the establishment of a school full of joy and creativity without the stress imposed by an exam-centred system which the policy of exams every four months conveys. About a pedagogically correct assessment of teachers and school pupils.
• About the crude procedures and fragmented health and safety measures.
• About the special education that is in a shameful state for our society.
• About the increasing, at an alarming rate, incidents of violence and delinquency, which are addressed with the allocation of meagre funding and inadequate mechanisms.
• About the feeble Technical and Vocational Education that is incapable of meeting school pupil’s real needs.
• About the Evening Lyceums and Technical Schools functioning on 1980’s specifications.
• About the New Appointee System that victimizes thousands of young graduates, killing their dreams of a dignified job. What will happen to the 5,000 people employed with the abhorrent purchase of services system?
• About the provision of student care which is being drastically cut when hundreds of students are being forced to abandon their studies.
• About the serious incidents and rise of nationalism-chauvinism in our education system.
• Finally, the Ministry shouldn’t forget that it is also the Ministry of…Culture. How much does it honor its name? The government’s depressing funds allocated for culture confirm that it considers it to be of secondary importance. Expenditure on the Arts and Letters, theatre, cinema, state libraries and other infrastructure projects are inadequate in the Ministry of Education and Culture budget for yet another year.

Our children’s education and training are suffocating because of the improvisations, communication game handlings and the Anastasiades – DISY government’s lack of a vision.

We, together with other social and educational forces, will contribute with our proposals in jointly shaping the common vision for the real Cypriot school of the future.

Our country and children need culture badly.