THE HOUSE Education Committee has rejected the Education Ministry’s suggestion that schools should decide internally what their uniforms should be.
Head of the Committee Nicos Tornaritis said yesterday the authority for determining school uniforms should be returned to the Ministry.
“Trying to decide on what the uniform should be created a mess in some schools,” Tornarites told the Cyprus Mail. “Teachers, pupils and parents couldn’t agree on what they wanted, creating indiscipline and delinquency while pupils wore what they wanted.”
The Committee’s decision, the DISY deputy added, was for the Educational Council – which consists of teachers, pupils and parents – to define three uniforms and for schools to choose which one they wanted.
But Education Ministry spokesman Panayiotis Matsis says that changing procedures again will create confusion and instability for the pupils.
“We (the Education Ministry) believe that it would be harmful to change procedures that have been in place for the past three months. This instability creates problems for the pupils and negative reactions.
“The program is nearly complete. Only a few schools haven’t submitted their plans yet, the rest from all over Cyprus have concluded and sent us their internal structural schemes.”
The Ministry believes that the decentralisation of school units is very important, continued Matsis. “It is much easier to abide to rules you have decided on by yourself than to have rules imposed on you. By making schools autonomous and giving teachers, pupils and parents the right to decide how to run their schools, we give them that freedom.”
And why had Parliament given in so easily, he wondered? “Is it because PSEM (the Pupils Union) asked that appropriate appearance be defined?
PSEM did suggest that school uniforms be defined, confirmed the union’s president, Soteris Xenofontos yesterday, because pupils were getting confused over what they are allowed to wear and what not.
“We believe that the Educational Council should set specific uniforms because this confusion over the matter is creating problems. In some schools, teachers and pupils are having difficulty deciding what their final plan should be and this is leading to conflict between them.”
In November, the Education Ministry requested that each school submit its official uniform code as soon as possible in order to avoid further complications on the matter. This followed threats from pupils of a two-hour boycott of classes if the situation wasn’t dealt with.
A few days later, the Ministry met with PSEM, the Secondary School Parents’ Association and teachers’ union OELMEK to discuss uniform issues, broader definition of “decent appearance” and the cancellation of expulsions that were given for uniform issues.
“If a school hasn’t followed the relevant law and hasn’t commonly agreed on what the uniform should be, then any expulsions given are illegal,” Xenofontos said at the time.
The matter will be discussed further at the House, where a final decision will be reached.
