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By Nicolas Petros Kaparti
Stuck in bureaucracy and the antiquated perception of our educational system, is the future of senior student, Nicolas Markantoni. The child has cerebral palsy and as of July 2021, his parents are fighting a battle to secure access to the national exams. Specifically, his parents are asking the Ministry of Education for differentiated papers (multiple choice type) for the child in order for him to pass the Pancyprian exams and study pedagogy as he dreams. However, this is not possible since the Ministry of Education throws up its hands in the air and replies that "the specification board, the test material and the test essays of the Pancyprian Access Examinations must have the same degree of difficulty for all candidates and it is not possible to differentiate them for any candidate or group of candidates".
As it appears through letters obtained by the Cyprus Times, the child's mother and president of the "Embrace of Hope" organization, Youla Pitsiali, has been making efforts since July 2021 to get an answer as to whether her child will sit for differentiated exams and now we are a few days before the start of the Pancyprian exams (June 10) and Nicholas is excluded from them.
Commissioner of Administration: "The persistence in refusing... In March 2022, the Commissioner for Administration and Protection of Human Rights recommended through a report (SEE HERE) "the provision of, both the complainant's son and other children with disabilities the necessary reasonable adjustments in the context of the National Access Examinations to enable them to be tested in a differentiated test, based on their assessed and individualised educational needs".
At the same time, the Commissioner indicated that "although this already takes place during the four-year examinations, the insistence on refusing to provide such reasonable individualized adjustments runs afoul of the UN Convention... which takes precedence as a law of heightened formal force over formal law and constitutes discrimination."
"Accordingly, either the Examinations Service will proceed consistently as is the case with the four-month examinations or the relevant law will be amended to add the phrase reasonable adjustments next to accommodations so as not to conflict with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and until the amendment is made it should be implemented within the framework of the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities," the Commissioner underlines, inter alia, in the said report.
OELMEK: "The child has the right to sit exams"
In a statement to the Cyprus Times on the issue, OELMEK vice-president Themis Polyviou said that "education is a matter for all children and the golden mean must be found. It is not possible to stop with these attitudes the decision of a child and his parents to sit for exams."
"Let them find a solution. The child has the right to sit for exams and let them set specific criteria for him to perform better. The legislation allows them to make such arrangements, but in these cases above all it is humanism," Mr. Polyviu added.
Prodromou sent a letter to the Rector
After what reactions arose the Minister of Education, Mr. Prodromos Prodromou, today sent a letter to the Rector of the University of Cyprus, Mr. Tasos Christofides,
and recommended that the University should exceptionally allocate one of the envisaged supernumerary positions to Nicolas Markantonis.
Predictably, this development angered Nicolas' mother and in a statement to the Cyprus Times she stressed that "we don't want any favours.
The issue is not for Nicolas to take a position but for every Nicolas to have the right to claim a position on equal terms with the reasonable adjustments he is entitled to."
"The issue is the Ministry's, that's where the obstacle is. It refuses to give differentiated writing to a student with a disability to sit for the Pancyprian Examinations, since it recognises reasonable adjustments in school as a correct procedure but does not recognise them for the Pancyprians."
She also explained that: "the solution is simple. They had to give the differentiated writing to the student. His teachers are ready to go with the subjects, based on the subjects, to differentiate the student's writing, as they did until the day before yesterday with the four months, and the position should be one of the supernumerary ones, so that no one else is affected and no one complains that the writing is easy. So that's the solution, it's very easy and they might as well do it from the beginning and not inconvenience us."
"The obstacle is that they don't want to make an admission that reasonable accommodation includes differentiated writing," she stressed.
Asked if she knows of any other cases of children who have been excluded from the Pancyprias due to this attitude of the Ministry, Ms. Pitsiali replied. But if the Ministry makes this assumption, there are other children who need it. It is the first time that it is so clear that a child has no access and they do not take the step to do another writing."
"They knew from last year that they would have a problem and I stayed at the last minute to solve it, because their intention from the beginning was not to do anything," he pointed out in conclusion.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that theCyprus Times tried to contact theMinistry of Education on the issue but this was not possible.
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Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
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