Al. Tsipras: Proposal for open but also safe schools

He expressed his strong concern about the spread of the pandemic through schools and students and the need to take measures to dilute the departments and change the 50% + 1 protocol established by the government during the successive meetings he had with the Bureau of Teachers. Federation of Greece and OLME the President of SYRIZA Progressive Alliance, Alexis Tsipras, in the framework of the initiative he has undertaken for meetings with bodies to take measures to stop the pandemic.

“We are proposing that our schools be open and safe,” Tsipras said, expressing concern that “a large part of the spread of the virus based on official data comes from students.” 25% of cases concern children. He characteristically stated that based on the official data, only in November we had 45,000 cases in students.

As he said, although fortunately the majority of children are not seriously ill or asymptomatic, this situation carries very serious risks for the spread in the community, because “children who are carriers of the virus come into contact with grandparents at home”.

Responding to the anxieties of the families and given that “we all want the schools to remain open and safe” Mr. Tsipras said that “we submitted a proposal” to change the protocol 50% + 1, ie more than half of the children should get sick of a section to close. This proposal, as he said, provides for the closure of a department in the first case for only 3 days and the mandatory resumption of classes after 3 days after all students have first undergone a free molecular test “to stop the chain of transmission”.

At the same time, he characterized as “unacceptable” the fact that the number of students per department is increasing. “It is inconceivable in the heart of the pandemic crisis that instead of diluting departments, merging, as they did last year,” he said, attributing the government’s choice to “fiscal reasons, lest teachers or substitute teachers be hired to work with fewer students.” “, while he reminded that during the SYRIZA government” in a period when there was no pandemic we reduced the students per class for pedagogical reasons “.

In closing, Tsipras referred to the Cisco scandal, noting that “in no other EU country could the Minister of Education stand if the Independent Personal Data Authority confirmed the concerns that the personal data of all children and their families “The previous two years of distance learning were used illegally by a company, Cisco.” He emphasized that the decision was not a signal of a formal antitrust inquiry into the United States, but said that it was a “clear and unequivocal affair”. In this context, he spoke of “a matter of both moral order and substance”, after the law was violated and added that “this can not pass without answers”.

Fears of expanding the dispersion through schools

For his part, the President of the IOC, Mr. Thanassis Kikinis, expressed his concern that the problem of spreading the virus in the educational community will increase with the worsening weather. “Unfortunately we are confirmed when we said at the beginning of the year that we will have a large number of cases in schools precisely because there is a large number of students in the departments,” he said, recalling that after the first wave ” in fact with specific rules of distances “, while he also made special mention of the” huge building problem that exists in the school units “.

The IOC President stressed that this discussion should have taken place with the government at the beginning of the school year, as now “we are again with our backs to the wall, as we come to discuss again how the schools will be closed and how long they will be closed. “while the aim would be to keep schools open with conditions of hygiene and safety”. “Unfortunately, the treatment of both the student and the educational community was not at any stage what it should be,” he said, adding that “now we have to talk again about what we should not discuss, that is, how and how much the schools will close.” “.

Although, as he said, “we raised the issue of diluting the number of students as much as possible, even where it was possible in both last year and this year, it was not done, the request was not met.” He added that “no attempt was made to find spaces in cooperation with the municipalities and the State, where alternatively school departments could be housed for a short time in order to achieve the smallest number of students per department”, stating the fact that “due to the reduction of “We came up with a law that increased them and brought them back to 25 per class, which is really painful.”

At the same time, he pointed out another point of view of the problem of the 50 + 1 protocol for the departments, as he said “in many schools the 50 + 1 of the teachers is ill”, with the result that since the closure of schools for teachers’ illness is not foreseen “Teachers from other school units in order to fill the gaps. That is, to move teachers from units that do not have a big problem with the coronavirus to another school that exists.”

Referring to the issue of distance education, Mr. Kikinis blamed the government for not following the “instructions” given by the Authority and that there is no “willingness to make adjustments”, “on the contrary, he threatened that the Authority would go to court after us” .

Finally, on the issue of evaluation, he expressed the view that “long before we discuss individual evaluation, we see that schools are entering the constellation of another type of function”, especially “if one combines it with the legislation we had in the last summer law that now allow schools to seek resources outside of central funding we all imagine where this story will go “, commenting that such a perception” is not in line with the prospect of improving educational outcomes “.

OLME: The Ministry of Education has lost its popular legitimacy

“Things in schools are marginal and health and pedagogical” stressed the vice president of OLME, Stella Manousogiorgaki, blaming the government as she said “not only did not proceed to the dilution of the departments that we and our parents have been asking for years and the students, on the contrary, after last year it legislated the increase of the number of students per department in the primary school, this year in October it proceeded with hundreds of dangerous department contractions resulting in currently having thousands of departments with 27 28 students in 30 and 40 square meters at best or often in much smaller ones and often even in containers “.

The vice-president of OLME, argued that the health protocol for schools has contributed to the increase of cases and the large dispersion as she stressed “the infamous protocol of 50% +1, it is clear from the data of EODY that it has contributed greatly to the increase of the spread of the virus, every day we have from 1500 to 2000 new cases in students.From the beginning of the school year we have over 130,000 cases in children up to 17 years old, compared to last year we see a huge increase and understand that this is mainly due to the protocol which does not allow the departments to close “.

Ms. Manousogiorgaki accused the government of not taking any measures because, as she stressed, “it still does not break the departments because it does not want to hire teachers” and added that they also face a big problem in the midst of a pandemic in terms of room cleanliness. The government does not hire additional cleaning staff nor is it reduced compared to last year and we have reached the point of seeing in two municipalities concluding two-hour or three-hour contracts with the cleaning staff “. It is characteristic of the government weakness and the lack of management of the pandemic that in our country there was the biggest big lockdown in the schools, as they remained closed for 8 months.

According to the vice-president of OLME, a big problem in dealing with the increase of cases in the educational community is the fact that prevention is particularly problematic or which could reduce the spread. The government, said the vice-president of OLME, “does not give the free rapid tests we ask for both vaccinated and unvaccinated as both groups are sick and transmit, on the contrary prefers division, does not track the cases we have in schools and “It does not take any measures for the congestion on school buses and MMMs where tens of thousands of students and teachers are moving.”

The vice-president of OLME stressed that their demands and their strong reaction are not the product of a conjunctural correlation of factions and forces that want to oppose. The participation of the industry proves that it is a universal request of teachers, something that, as he stressed, “proves that the Ministry of Education does not have the approval and popular legitimacy for what it does because when we say 90% of teachers it means that regardless of political ideology, party affiliation , disagree with the policy of the ministry “.

Finally, he stressed that teachers do not want closed schools, “we want open schools but we now want measures to make their operation safe for the entire educational community.”

The meetings were also attended by the Head of Education of SYRIZA PS, Mr. Nikos Filis, the Deputy Head of Education, Mrs. Meropi Tzoufis and the former Minister of Education, Costas Gavroglou.