Teachers still on the warpath

THE EDUCATION Minister’s admission that the University of Cyprus (UCY) had every right to accept students with international accreditation, regardless of parliament’s approval, yesterday provoked an intense reaction by teachers’ union OELMEK.

Asked whether the university had the right to apply the regulations itself without them being approved by parliament, Minister Andreas Demetriou said: “If there are no regulations then yes it can. The whole discussion took place because of this.”

He added: “Therefore we feel that the Cabinet decision to send to parliament, with the procedure of urgency, the regulations as they had been approved by the Education Council, is the most balanced and wise decision, which leads the system out of this dead end”.

The minister’s statements, in combination with rumours that the UCY was planning to meet and decide whether to accept the section of students after the Pancyprian exams so as to prevent the teachers from taking action, provoked an angered reaction by OELMEK President Eleni Semelidou.

“Am I to assume that the university is moving in the direction of a dictatorial conception of things?” she told CyBC. “If the university moves ahead by itself – and truly today there is a certain kind of threat circulating that the university will move ahead by itself – it will be scorning the Cabinet and Parliament”

Either way, the Education Minister made it clear that UCY had the right to do so.

OELMEK will be meeting today to decide how to proceed further.

On Thursday, the House Plenum rejected the government’s demand to urgently pass regulations approved by the Cabinet for allowing students with international accreditation into public universities.

Teachers had threatened to boycott end-of-year exams if the move went ahead.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.