The Ministry of Education and Culture is positioned with "special hostility, relentless resistance, intolerant and misanthropic attitudes" against children with disabilities, the Cyprus Confederation of Disabled Organizations (CYSOA) states in its statement.
"The insult to their dignity and their exclusion at all levels that it defiantly refuses to recognize and name as such, seems to be not only the result, but also the purpose of the Ministry's decisions. Overtly parents and educators are pressured by any means to consent to segregation, exclusion, and disenfranchisement. To agree to take children out of the mainstream, to accept the arrogant and completely unsubstantiated position that their children deserve less, that they cannot have a future of integration, and that removing them from children their own age is for their own good»? , notes KYSOA.
"The professors’ all these non-democratic policies”, the statement added, “refer to the particularly harsh treatment of unsuspecting and innocent children with disabilities, who study or wish to study in the general classroom in the community and the discrediting of KYSOA and the organizations of parents who disagree with these wrong policies and practices».
"Given the government's publicly expressed policy of implementing evaluation procedures from the very first grade of primary school with the purpose of "sacking" of these children in special schools and special units, as if they were children born without rights, they and their parents are strictly forbidden to decide on the determination of their future”, it added.
With regard to the recent case of the 8-year-old student who wishes to study and be educated in her class with all the necessary support, it seems, reports KYSOA, "that this is not a recent, isolated decision to separate her, but there is a history of violations against of her, which was tolerated with inaction and silence».
The student, it is noted, “already has traumatic experiences (from behavioral harassment to violence), from her short study in a special unit, where the Ministry and its officials who handled the case at the relevant time, exerted unbearable pressure, even through third parties, including politicians and others, with the aim of depriving rights: This is a persistent effort on the part of the Ministry, to retaliate against the mother through her daughter, for her actions to stop the violations in the pre-primary class.
"It cannot be ruled out that the threats against the mother at the time when she protested about what her daughter experienced in the unit, are being implemented today with the persistent decision to forcefully confine the 8-year-old in a room with four other children, where no lessons are held, no syllabus is applied and the time is shared between the children while most of the time, these children are just "busy" with activities” is added.
The mother, KYSOA continues, "repeats that the decision to "exclude" was taken without the so-called Central Committee having in front of it any relevant evidence (evaluation report) or other information from the experts who know the student, sealing the arbitrary decision made to exclude and separate the student from her friends and neighborhood children».
Similar behaviors and pressures, it is reported, are observed in dozens of other cases of children of various ages throughout Cyprus.
KYSOA refers to two students who "for the 12th consecutive week are out class and no one from the Ministry of Education seems really interested in supporting the family and the children themselves to continue in education.
"Despite the initial recommendation of the experts to study in the general class, another disabled student ended up in the unit. After two successful appeals in court, the Ministry persisted and finally succeeded in winning an appeal against these decisions on purely formal grounds. One of the main reasons she is kept in the Larnaca high school unit is, according to the mother, that the student serves the teachers in the care of the children in the special unit, it added.
In another case, a mother of a child with Down Syndrome, it is reported, after his studies in pre-primary school, "she was misled by the Ministry officials who assured her that her daughter would allegedly be given remedial teaching and insisted that "for the good of the child" she would have to be registered in a special unit at a great distance from her place of residence, as a result of which the single mother would have to move. The environment of the special unit created enormous stress for the student (her hair also fell out), resulting in serious regression and psychosocial problems, which did not exist before.
Another student in a kindergarten in Limassol, continues KYSOA , she is a “victim of aggressive behavior by the special class teacher herself who in various ways prevents even her support.” And this mother, like many other parents, is a victim of retaliation through her child, because she claims the implementation of human rights and equal, quality education for her daughter. However, the Ministry of Education is making strong efforts to oblige the student to be locked up in a special unit.
Another case, it is added, concerns an 8-year-old with a disability, where "all the specialists who attend him, without exception, supported him to study in the general class at a school in his neighborhood, something that is not recorded in the relevant three-line rejection letter of "echitelism" which was sent to his mother».
Source: KYPE
