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- Ελληνικά
The Minister of Education, Sports and Youth, Athena Michaelidou, participated today in a session of the Parliamentary Committee on Education and Culture, which continued to discuss the issue of violence and delinquency in schools.
After the session, the Minister said in a statement to journalists: "Let me again thank our MPs, the Chair and members of the House Education Committee for the opportunity to discuss the issues of violence and delinquency that concern and interest us all. Let us take this opportunity to clarify that there is a difference between the phenomenon of bullying and generally the violence and delinquency that occurs internationally in schools, in society, in the family, and the extreme incidents of serious violence, such as sexual abuse.
I want to dwell on these, because we talked about them in our previous session and say that there is legislation on sexual abuse. That legislation requires any of us who even suspect that a minor is involved in sexual abuse, either as a victim or a perpetrator, to report it, not to the school, but to the police directly.
And it seems that this process is working based on the statistics that the Police announce - we had an announcement on this last Saturday - it seems that the school is now speaking out, by this expression I believe that children and teachers have broken their silence and are reporting incidents of sexual abuse. We should note here that the vast majority of these involve sexual abuse, unfortunately in the family and social environment. We are not talking about school. In school there are very few cases where we have suspicions of sexual abuse, so we should not confuse people.
I should also mention that the protocols and procedures seem to be working, because after a complaint is made to the police, the Children's House takes over with multidisciplinary teams involving specialists and educational psychologists and sociologists and others, as well as other services and the police, and they decide whether the matter is sexual abuse or not. Our concern is for the children. Children living and being educated in a safe environment. The role of the school is mainly prevention and we have already started. It is not thoughts prevention is already actions.
Since September we have integrated prevention programs against violence and delinquency from Pre-school education. What the research supports, that is, if you do not start from the age of five, from the age of four still, now that they will be attending school earlier, to talk about prevention, about violence, delinquency and other issues that have to do with their pedagogical culture, such as literacy, you will not have the expected results at 16 and 17.
So we don't expect very successful actions at 16 and 17 if we don't invest in these issues much earlier and the Department of Education has acted early and continues to act and improve. It is worth noting that much of the material has been used in other countries as an example of good practice, most recently in Greece, and we are pleased about this.
The evidence, in any case, shows that there is an improvement in that children and teachers have broken their silence and what we are interested in and what is important now is better coordination of all services so that the emphasis is from the family, from home to school and then to the community, to the courts, to the yard, to the neighbourhood, to reduce as much as possible the phenomena of violence and delinquency."
The Minister then answered journalists' questions.
Asked if she urges parents to go directly to the police for such incidents, the Minister replied. I tell them to follow the law. The legislation says that incidents of sexual abuse are reported directly to the police, even if the teacher or other students suspect that sexual abuse is being carried out."
Asked if this also applies to drugs, Michailidou said: "No there we have procedures and protocols in the school. The school, the management team must know how to act. There is a protocol in the hands of the management team in which it is stated who they notify, when the Direct Intervention Team acts, when the Educational Psychology Service intervenes and there we have already decided to support and strengthen these services so that we can cope better. So, we are not abdicating the responsibilities of the school. I want to make that clear, especially on the issues of violence and delinquency. But in sexual abuse, the law absolutely has to be followed."
In commenting that some teachers, especially when it comes to serious criminal acts, are reluctant to report and what needs to be done to stop this happening, the Minister noted: "The evidence shows that it is much better than it used to be and we don't have that evidence, the Police have it. That is that teachers are talking about the fact that there are many more complaints about the criminal activities that are being carried out, not only in the school, but especially elsewhere. However, our job is to inform and encourage our teachers, our principals, to report anything that seems odd to them, so that the services can act for the benefit of the children. We have had an online platform for years in schools to report incidents of violence. They didn't. They wanted to keep it quiet, so as not to give the school a bad name or to avoid inconvenience. However, we now put a lot of emphasis on helping them report it. And it seems that in the last 2-3 years this has been successful."
Regarding her response to MPs' complaints that she interprets many incidents very differently from what they actually are, Michailidou replied, "We answer clearly that these incidents are not a matter of interpretation. Either they are sexual abuse or they are not, and the Ministry of Education does not interpret them. We are not experts. There are experts: doctors, members of multidisciplinary teams, who will decide whether or not something, after a police investigation, is sexual abuse or not. So let us leave it to the experts. We are not experts. What we are saying is not that there are no issues. Of course there are issues, but we need to know where to turn in order to resolve the issue properly, always for the benefit of the child."
Asked if the issue of drugs in schools is on the rise and about the rumours that there is also trafficking outside primary schools, Michailidou noted: "Yes, we have heard this as well and to say that we are in good communication with the police. You know that there are cells of teachers in the schools who are working with the Police to be able to give information and who have had a hard time for a long time to talk because they also fear for their physical integrity. This is what we need to break. Now it's what's breaking: the silence of teachers, of school principals, especially on drugs. We should also mention that the police know better than anyone else the high-risk schools and it is there that we have the action from the police themselves, so that we can also act better in what is our responsibility, in the pedagogical part and prevention."
Asked how she views the suggestions by some MPs to create separate structures for perpetrators or for children with delinquent behaviour who cannot be integrated into schools, the Minister said: "The legislation provided for some structures from 2021 and we said that we are in the process of implementing those structures which do not involve the Ministry of Education, but we as the Ministry of Education had also said that for extreme offending we have a proposal ready. Before we were called by the House, we had this proposal for an alternative attendance programme.
Asked if she was talking about separate schools for these children, the Minister clarified: "That a case that meets, for example, certain characteristics - not just being a naughty or delinquent student - should be taken out of school to receive up to three months of an alternative programme with counselling, with psychologists, but also to attend classes at the same time. Because we are in favour of a framework that is not segregated and that he can then return to his school, but this will be ready within the next few weeks so that we can pilot it from the next school year. It needs work, it needs study, but most importantly it needs constant evaluation because this data is very sensitive."
Asked if she has gotten the messages regarding the understaffing of important services and if she is beginning to staff those services, Michaelidou replied, "We are not waiting for a session of the House to get the messages, because we are living the issue. So we had already taken a decision to increase the membership of the Direct Intervention Team. Already for a long time the data speak for themselves. We want more educational psychologists and we also want more counsellors in schools. Our research shows us that counselling can do a good job i.e. children can refer to these people and talk to them in confidence. So we know this and have been working systematically in this direction for a long time. To get better results. But it takes time for that."
In reference to a report made during the session that teasing of a sexual nature is a daily occurrence in schools, Ms. Michaelidou noted: "It was a bit extreme that we would certainly know if these things were happening. You can talk to teachers and principals about it. I just think that blowing things out of proportion doesn't help. On the other hand, hiding doesn't help there either and where we have phenomena we need to report them so they can be investigated. We can't let something like this hang over the school. Also, the data, I repeat, does not confirm this. There are very few incidents of extreme sexual misconduct that occur mainly in high schools or technical schools, and the police data confirms that both protocols and procedures are followed in these schools. Our concern is children, whether they are perpetrators or victims, they are children and we must support them. That is why we want our services then, after the investigation, close to them, because they will be children and then they will be the citizens of this country. And as I said, if we can help them in time, from pre-primary, we will be a much healthier society," the Education Minister concluded.
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