31-08-16 Filis citeslate ND MP Pavlos Bakoyannis to counter ND on private education regulation

Education, Research and Religious Affairs Minister Nikos Filis sought cross-party consensus in an address kicking off a two-day debate on a major Education Ministry Bill. Filis underlined that he is open to proposed improvements of the bill from opposition parties, particularly as regards special education and private schools. The bill comes to a vote on the night of Wednesday, 31 August.

The bill establishes Uniform All-Day Schools nationwide, significantly bolsters and expands special education and vocational schools, while regulating private school education, diaspora Greek schools, and educational programmes for the children of refugees and migrants.

“The first act of the SYRIZA-ANEL government was to restore a democratic environment in schools, stopping vengeful layoffs that were cloaked as quality evaluations, to return teachers that were put on ice, and to stop at 2.8 percent of GDP the decline of state education spending. If New Democracy and Pasok were still ruling education spending would have dropped top 1.8 of GDP. That differential in absolute numbers is 175 million euros. Our poor public schools would have become even poorer,” Filis.

Filis has repeatedly said that the government’s overarching aim in the reform bill is to upgrade public education, which is a pillar of democracy, and to offer all students equal educational opportunities at all schools nationwide.    

Responding to the harsh criticism of main opposition New Democracy over private education regulation, Filis quoted a 1976 article in the Sunday To Vima on private education by the late Pavlos Bakoyannis, the widely respected journalist, moderate New Democracy MP, and brother-in-law of the current main opposition leader:

“The lack of tenure in private education is not just a disadvantage for educators, since if the matter were limited to that it would have only a limited social import. It triggers a number of other anomalies. Teachers depend totally on the employer, whose basic aim is profit. And the more the teacher depends on the employer, the more the school becomes a business and less a school and educational facility. This insecurity of private school teachers leads ineluctably to a series of retreats at the expense of education. This is especially obvious at private schools that attract students who for whatever reasons were not able to progress at state schools, “ Bakoyannis wrote. “The first duty that must be imposed on businessmen-salesmen of education is to offer tenure so that teaching staff can devote themselves to their work unimpeded and far from business pressures. With tenured teaching staff at private schools, state oversight can be better and more effectively exercised. And all this will apply for the interlude in which private education still exists, because the long-term policy of the state must be the abolition of private education and the offering by the state of free education.”

“If we said this today, some would charge that we are Stalinists,” Filis noted  

Filis said that the current leader of New Democracy [Kyriakos Mitsotakis] must ask himself how accurate are the charges of an alleged government attempt to “Sovietise” education.  

The Education Minister presented in detail the bill’s measures regarding both special education and private education. He said the bill establishes order in private education, which he said New Democracy wants entirely unregulated.

Regarding special education, Filis said 9,100 substitute teachers will be hired this year, more than any other past year. In addition, he underlined that 543 induction classes are being established, after eight years of prior governments’ indifference to special education.