The operation of a summer school until 4pm for children attending special schools was announced today by the Minister of Education, Sports and Youth, Dr. Athena Michaelidou.
In her statements after today's Cabinet meeting, Dr. Michaelidou said that starting next June, they will implement "another commitment through the governance program, the one that concerns children attending special schools and their need to attend summer schools."
Therefore, he added, "from next June, in all special schools, a summer school will operate until 4pm where children will have the opportunity for creative employment as well as for their therapies."
Describing the "important step", the Minister said "we are giving an opportunity to both children and parents with this action" and that the proposal concerns all eight summer schools nationwide, while last year two summer schools operated on a pilot basis. "So instead of 5 weeks, they will operate for six weeks, from the end of June to the beginning of August, because we have also promoted a relevant provision for this extension in Parliament", she said.
The ministry's second proposal, approved today by the Council of Ministers, said the Minister of Education, concerns the revised National Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development and Green Development 2030.
This new strategy, which has been developed through dialogue with all affected stakeholders, said Dr. Michaelidou, focuses on environmental education and sustainability and was deemed necessary due to new data and policies and due to the challenges globally but mainly in Europe.
"It concerns the strengthening of education for sustainability at all levels, so we are also entering secondary education, the revision of the educational curricula for environmental education and sustainability in pre-primary and primary education, the upgrading of the state network of environmental education centers, the strengthening of education and training programs for our teachers on the subject, the upgrading of school infrastructure with green specifications, which is something that interests us particularly, international collaborations, the empowerment of our youth and the strengthening of the climate resilience of our schools with an emphasis on the creation of green spaces in schools," he said.
According to the same, the main objective of the revised national strategy is the "implementation at the level of formal, non-formal and informal education and at all levels of education of integrated systematic, unified and long-term horizontal actions and measures with the aim of contributing to the strengthening, empowerment, promotion of changes and reforms required at the level of politics, educational institutions, teachers and learners so that we have the active citizens we want, the active citizens of our society".
The implementation of these new actions, he added, is planned for the period 2025-2030 and the strategy includes specific timetables, a budget and is also part of the Ministry's medium-term budgetary framework.
Source: KYPE
