The government on Monday renewed its call for dialogue with all education stakeholders in a bid to break the impasse threatening to keep schools closed after the summer holidays.
“The doors to dialogue remain open and I hope we will soon meet with the teachers’ unions again,” Education Minister Costas Hambiaouris said after a meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades at the presidential summer residence in Troodos.
The sides have been at loggerheads for over a month over a cabinet decision to end the practice of reduced teaching hours according to the length of service as well as for extra-curricular activities.
Government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou who was present at the Troodos meeting said Hambiaouris would be inviting teachers’ unions anew to talks, as had been decided at the end of July.
“We’ve had a working meeting with the president who was briefed in detail by the minister on all the developments,” the spokesman said.
Prodromou added that it had been agreed for the minister to invite the unions in the next few days, sending them a document detailing the issues.
The spokesman reiterated that the government was open to a dialogue on the decisions in question as well as the other parts of the exemptions system in a bit to arrive at consensual decisions.
“The government is insisting on a dialogue. The minister will make a last appeal in a substantiated way on all the issues faced at the moment and we want to hope that this dialogue will take place constructively as it had been agreed on July 27,” Prodromou said.
The government has proposals and the ministry has drafted detailed positions on all issues but to have this discussion there must be dialogue, the spokesman added.
The matter has been in the spotlight for over a month now with the government appearing resolute, at least for the time being, and teachers’ unions determined not to back down.
The public debate that ensued was also marked by exchanges on social media between Auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides and the employers’ association Keve, on one side, and educators on the other.
Thousands of teachers took to the streets in July to protest and are expected to do so again at the end of this month if the issue is not resolved.
In the letter they sent to Hambiaouris, the unions propose, among other things, that the ministry could reduce teacher secondments to the ministry, suspend teacher training programmes, transfer permanent teachers who have become superfluous due to lack of interest by pupils in their subjects to other posts, and offer incentives for early retirement.
