The evaluation of timetables and curricula in primary, secondary general and secondary technical and vocational education, as well as the issue of the change of school hours, was discussed on Wednesday by the Parliamentary Committee on Education.
In a statement after the session, Parliamentary Education Committee Chairman Pavlos Mylonas said they continued the debate today on the timetables and curricula in primary, secondary and technical education and kindergartens.
"There was a productive debate. Dialogue never harmed anyone. There are various opinions, we heard for example the view that both timetables and curricula need no change. Everything is going smoothly. It is perfectly respectable. I still believe that the terrible problems facing public education as a whole are not being addressed in the way that some argue they should be addressed. I still believe that to get to 10 you need to start at 1 and methodically, in an organized way and after consultation and dialogue to arrive at an outcome."
That, he continued. Mylonas, which is terribly surprising is the fact that almost everyone or everyone supports all-day school and asked "how do we go to all-day school with all these problems that we don't have to solve or we have to solve or we have to enter into a dialogue to solve them to get to all-day school." He also assured that "I will continue my efforts and I and other colleagues so that through dialogue we can arrive at an outcome that will bear fruit for our children, who are the protagonists of public education, and the rest of us to recall that we are tools that we are paid to work precisely for the protagonists of public schools, which are the children, the students."
Mylonas said that studies done by American universities and by universities in the United Kingdom prove that the productivity of children and teachers in the very, very early hours of the morning is not beneficial for either children or teachers.
"If we now all still believe in our election manifestos that we should promote all-day schools for the benefit of our children, we should also be told how we are going to get to all-day schools if everything else can be thought of as problems other than solving problems," he added.
DISY MP George Karoullas[/B] said in a statement that they discussed today for the second consecutive session the evaluation of the timetables and curricula of all levels of public schools and listened to relevant proposals, suggestions and concerns. "We reiterate our firm political position that our education system as a living organism must be modernized and reformed on the basis of a vision and a concrete strategy, always focusing on the child so that it can respond creatively and successfully to the competitive conditions of our changing society," he added.
He said, "it is also our belief that any proposal should be discussed following a specific tactic of structured social dialogue, so that it creates expectations of success of a comprehensive reform and that it does not upset the stakeholders, parents, guardians, teachers and, of course, children."
"With the engagement of all stakeholders, productively and creatively, on the basis of rational and costed interdisciplinary cross-sectional proposals, complementing each other for the reconstruction of the public school, we put forward the radical proposal of the candidate for President of the Republic, Averof Neophytou, for the operation of a full-day school for all children. A proposal whose philosophy can accommodate and discuss the ideas put forward, which is an educational and social necessity. He added that the proposal of DISY President Averof Neophytou incorporates both the creative revision of timetables and the modernization of curricula for the benefit of children, society and the future of the country.
"This proposal is at the same time a call to all political forces, stakeholders and society at large for cooperation and dialogue based on the perspective for the citizen of tomorrow. What I also want to emphasize is that serious, scientific, and creative work is done at the Ministry of Education and Science on the basis of the most modern pedagogical principles and methods, and the results in international examinations for a number of subjects testify to the positive achievements in learning outcomes," he added.
AKEL MP Christos Christofides,[/B] said in a statement that they examined the progress of curricula and timetables in the education system today in the Parliament's Education Committee.
"It is true that this issue is very serious because it concerns the very content of the education provided. It is also true that a serious and structured effort is being made by the bodies involved, the Pedagogical Institute, academics and teachers themselves, particularly with regard to the curricula. However, the educational system is a whole, the best curricula we can have, if the system itself does not support their efficient operation, we cannot get anywhere," he added.
He said, "when we have a purely exam-centric system and our children are running around all day like robots, getting stressed, losing the love of learning and creating in school, feeling a terrible oppression and stress, the best curricula we have cannot reverse this situation."
He went on to cite a second example, which was denounced to the Education Committee today. "The OELMEK rightly said that in directions four and five in high schools, there seems to be a problem. Obviously there is a problem. When many children, hundreds of children want to go into technical education and are turned down because, loud and clear, there are no places and those children, instead of going into auto mechanics or pursuing hairdressing or pursuing what they want to pursue, we send them to high school because there are no places and we say, well now where are you going to go? You pick these bundles because the others are particularly difficult. The result is that these children are in a classroom, in a direction that they know and we know that they are not interested and of course a number of problems are created."
So, he said. Christofides, what the Ministry of Education should do "is to link the quality of the curricula, the purpose of our education in Cyprus and the goals, with the educational issue itself and to make those changes that our educational issue needs in order to be able to support the content of the curricula."
"This is our goal. This is our vision. We have specific positions and proposals. We developed some of them today in the Education Committee of the Parliament to change the very image and content of our education system," he added.
The Independent MP, Andreas Themistocleous, said in a statement that the discussion about changing the hours of schools, primary, secondary and high schools, is pointless.
"It will further complicate things, it eats up time and will lead the economy, society, and certainly the student community to upheavals, unnecessary adventures. Every hour added beyond 1:30 p.m. will be an hour added late at night to the lives and efforts of our students. Beyond that, all government, public, private, municipal, industry and the entire service industry will be disrupted. If hopefully the effort by some members to have school hours coincide with parent and guardian hours, i.e., to have both go to 8 or 8:30 a.m., succeeds, then remember one thing: Getting off the streets will take until 11-12," he added."
He said it is an unnecessary inconvenience for an issue that society itself has never called for change, neither the educational organizations nor the students.
"We are now coming to conduct experiments and tests to satisfy whom?That is why my position is that this is a pointless, unnecessary and unnecessary debate, which only offers inconvenience to everyone," he added.
Regarding the all-day school, Themistocleous said that the President of DISY has promised a compulsory all-day school.
"First, this should be done and then we should come to see the curricula and timetables of our schools. But until then, we cannot say today that students should stay in school, because the infrastructure is not there, the facilities are not there, there are generally not the necessary services to have a full-day school. When they are here we will be to discuss it again," he noted.
In a statement regarding the issue of school hours, EDEK MP Andreas Apostolou said that "what we believe that our education system needs at the moment, but especially the families, who work late, is to improve and expand the institution of optional full-day schools in pre-primary education, primary and secondary schools, so that parents who work in the private sector can have the opportunity for their children to have a quality lunch, have quality childcare, read their lessons and be able to pick them up happily when they get home from work.
"The second issue that concerns us very much and we have registered an issue in the Labour and Social Welfare Committee , is the support of young parents for crèches. At the moment with the end of maternity leave and until the children go to pre-primary there are not enough structures or support from the state so that there is childcare for these children. This is of course not a matter for the Education Committee. The third issue, which touches on the Education Committee and which we discussed today is the need to extend pre-primary education from the age of 4," he added.
A long-standing proposal, Apostolou said, "which we have been told and we have been told today will be included in the Recovery Fund."
He noted that they believe that the implementation of these three measures, which can be implemented in a simple way, will support families, young parents and achieve the goal of balancing family and work life.
Meanwhile, in a memo in relation to school opening hours, the Pancyprian Guild ISOTITA states that they are of the opinion that the proposed changes will affect or even possibly shake the daily life of pupils, their parents who are also employees (in the public and wider public sector services and in the private sector) and educational workers, who are the directly affected employees and parents at the same time.
"Working hours constitute an essential condition of employment and cannot be changed unilaterally without the consent of the affected workers," it adds.
The memorandum notes that before such changes take place, the views of all the above should be sought and taken into account and the impact on students' free afternoon time and how family life may be affected, on the traffic situation in urban centres, on the time affected working parents attend work, should also be studied.
Source: CNA
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