The Minister of Education, Prodromos Prodromou, responded to the statements of the AKEL MP, Christos Christofidis, about the four-month exams through his written statement, speaking of risk management on behalf of AKEL.
Specifically the Minister of Education, reports that “once again, monotonously returning to its dogmatic and anachronistic positions, AKEL is trying to deny the reform of the student evaluation system that has been carried out successfully in recent years and is being completed this year in high schools”.
“In its announcement, AKEL”, according to Mr. Prodromou, “risks by talking about an extremely dangerous path. But if there is something dangerous, it is the anachronistic perception of AKEL and the denial of evaluation and meritocracy procedures. If there is anything dangerous, it is the leveling policies advocated by AKEL. Indeed, where their leveling notions have been applied in the past, whether in matters of education or in other spheres of social life, we have seen the disastrous results”.
He also notes that, “in a modern society and for a structured education system that promotes knowledge and meritocracy, the corresponding evaluation procedures are also needed. Everywhere in the modern world and in organized educational systems there are also reliable assessment procedures. With great efforts, dealing with the individual problems and adopting important adjustments and improving changes, which should also be credited to the teachers, in recent years the new student evaluation system has been completed in practice and successfully implemented in our country. While the proposal for a modern evaluation system of educational work and teachers is now ready”.
“As is well known, from the first moment AKEL opposes this reform, sticking to its well-known logic, that of leveling. However, if we were to speak of failure, as is done in the announcement of AKEL, what failed were their systematic efforts to impose their anachronistic perceptions and to stand in the way of progressive changes”, states the Minister of Education catalytically in his announcement.
It is recalled that earlier, the AKEL MP, in his statement, stated that “as we had unfortunately predicted, for many months now, the issue of exams in four months, is leading our schools, starting this year and our high schools, on an extremely dangerous path. Huge issues have arisen which create a chaotic situation. A situation which has to do with the placement of various courses on the same day, the overlap, the lack of knowledge by the school administrations themselves and by the teachers, of what will actually be done with the exams in the four months”.
Finally, he said that “once again we are receiving strong reactions from parents, students and teachers. At the same time, of course, apart from this chaotic situation that has been created due to wrong handling, the huge issues in relation to this failed institution continue to exist, related to the strengthening of para-education, the multiplication of stress and pressure on students and teachers and mainly in that the essence of learning, of the pedagogical process, is lost behind this industry of constant examinations, which only succeeds in reinforcing parroting, memorization of knowledge and techniques for examinations. Things that are neither modern nor will they be of any use to our students in the future.”
