Teachers protest fast-track for appointments list

By Evie Andreou

PRIMARY and secondary education teachers staged a protest outside parliament on Thursday morning, in a last effort to influence deputies on the bill regulating new appointments, debated during an extraordinary meeting of the House education committee in the presence of minister Costas Kadis.

Teachers held up banners with slogans saying “the education ministry is an untrustworthy employer” and were calling on Kadis “not to throw them in the bin”.

The government wants the bill passed before the end of the parliamentary season, so that the three-year period where the ministry will appoint a number of teachers with the old system, according to seniority, will begin in September.

Primary education teachers’ union POED wants the reassurance that Kadis will discuss with them within the next three years a framework to include all substitute teachers in the appointments that are to take place from September and until 2018, before the new candidate lists are introduced.

The first exams for the new candidates’ lists will take place in 2017. From 2018 until 2022, half of the appointments will be made according to the existing system and half with the new system.

The head of the association of secondary education teachers who received pre-service training (SEPKA) Elisseos Christodoulou, said that they too want an extension of the transitional period to 2025, so that members have the opportunity to be employed.

“We left our jobs to be able to take the eight-month pre-service training of the ministry since it was a pre-requisite to be considered as candidates for a teaching appointment in public education, but now with the constant changes in the timetables, several of us will be left out,” he said.

Despite that, secondary education union OELMEK had agreed to the new appointment system adding, however, that they will not accept double standards as regards to appointments.

“If the education ministry and the House see fit to extend the transitional period … OELMEK has no objection, as long as it will be applicable to all levels of public education, primary and secondary,” the union said.

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