Ministry of Education: Unfortunately, cases occur in students due to concentrations

At the end of the session, the Minister made statements to journalists.

Specifically, he said: "We have informed the Parliamentary Committee on Education about planning, which exists in the Ministry of Education for this school year in relation to the fact that we operate in pandemic conditions and therefore a number of students need to attend distance education, when it is not possible for reasons of health protection, to attend with physical presence in schools.

In addition to the decisions on additional measures in the provinces of Limassol and Paphos - where the entire Lyceum and Technical Schools operate exclusively remotely for two weeks - in places and at various times, other schools already have several children attending remotely.

First of all, we must say that, according to the legislation now, distance education is a regular study. However, because we live in a pandemic and we do not know where the phenomenon will be observed, for this reason and in order to avoid any non-uniformity, the Ministry of Education has provided at least three ways in which, if necessary, we can recover teaching time.

First of all, a mechanism is already in place through the Inspections, so that at all levels of education the progress of teaching is monitored daily in relation to the Curriculum and Adequacy Ratios. I can say that so far, at least in high school education, it has been recorded that on November 10, teaching has covered what was provided until now, ie 50% of the first four months. So the rate of attendance of the program so far is normal. But because no one knows exactly what will happen next, we envisage three measures with which we will react if necessary.

First, as was the case in the previous school year, we have plenty of time in the school year, without extending the school year, during which we can extend our studies and teaching.

Already, during last school year, this had happened in both Primary Schools and Gymnasiums. I remind you that usually in the schools in the previous years the classes of the Lyceum and the Technical Schools finished the teaching in the first fortnight of May. So until the end of June there is enough time to be able, if necessary, to supplement teaching and the schedule of exams will be adjusted accordingly.

In addition, an amendment to the regulations has been prepared, which had been discussed since last year and will be submitted to a legislative audit and then we will submit it to the Parliament, so that in exceptional cases, such as those of the pandemic, it is possible to change the duration. of the Christmas and / or Easter holidays and there we can recover some days, if it is an urgent need.

And a third measure, which I believe is the last, but has already been discussed and we have support from the Government for any expenditure that will be needed, is, where there is probably no other solution, to provide additional teaching hours with overtime work beyond of the Schedule to correct things in places, if necessary.

The above measures or any of the above measures, if necessary, will be decided in due course. It is still too early, we have most of the school year ahead of us and it would not be wise to rush. I repeat that so far the development of teaching in schools in general is satisfactory in terms of meeting the Adequacy Indicators and of course the teachers are already adapting and making great efforts that are commendable.

At the same time, I would like to reiterate to parents and guardians that maintaining a username and password to enable children to participate in distance education and the system is the responsibility of children. We therefore recommend that parents advise and guide children to retain this information in order to participate in the program remotely. If some children do not attend classes either because they do not have codes or for some other reason, absences will be recorded.

At the same time, we must reiterate an appeal to both students and parents to pay special attention to socializing and social activities outside of school. Because unfortunately in some cases groups of students / three are identified who appear as cases due to some concentrations that should be avoided. Certainly there must be a special responsibility for students who have a positive result in diagnoses. We had such an incident, these days, in a school in the area of ​​the capital, as a result of which the disease is transmitted to other children at school, and it is really a pity that we do not discipline and do not follow the rules, thus endangering our health. but also to influence the operation of the whole school ".