The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth, Mr Prodromos Prodromou, made statements today at the Ministry regarding the reopening of schools after the Christmas holidays.
Specifically, Mr Prodromou said: "Since various information is being publicly reproduced that is often not even accurate, I would like to make some clarifications. We were faced with a great challenge with the reopening of schools in this situation and the outbreak of the pandemic.
A challenge which we managed to meet with enormous efforts and difficulties. Both on the first and second day of school opening it was possible, despite the large numbers, to replace or replace teachers who had to be absent from the headquarters. This was a very large number of teachers, both in primary and secondary education, who had to remain under house arrest.
What has already happened since the holidays and throughout last weekend is that the directorates of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth (MESY), in collaboration with the school principals, and always in open line with the Education Service Commission (ESC), have been able to record the exact needs and provide solutions to replace the absent teachers.
As you know, the Education Service Commission has the authority for substitutions. Replacements are made through public bidding and an electronic process. It should be noted, however, that, especially under these circumstances, through the notices issued by the EES, in primary education the opportunity was given, due to the numbers, not only to unappointed teachers, but also to unappointed kindergarten teachers and philologists to apply for a replacement position.
In those cases where, through the procedures of the EIS and the call for applications, there are not enough candidates for replacement teachers for the posts to be filled, the needs are met by the Ministry through a replacement procedure. There is an established procedure for substitutions. That is, teachers serving in education are stipulated that they have a duty to substitute for their colleagues for a certain number of hours, both in primary and secondary education.
So this is a second pool that has been tapped, and then we have also tapped teachers from other programs of the Ministry of Education who have been able to substitute for teachers who were absent in primary education. As a result of all these actions, schools have reopened normally since the end of the Christmas holidays and the departments that were operating were all staffed.
The goal of the Ministry of Education is to continue to operate with a physical presence in the schools and we will fight, we will do everything possible, to provide replacements and make up for the gaps. This is in response to the various comments that have been made so far, but also wanting to underline and reiterate our thanks to the thousands of teachers and to the school managements with whom we have continuous cooperation and who have responded to these particular difficulties."
IP
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