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The installation of air conditioners in schools will begin in the coming days, Minister of Education, Sports and Youth Athina Michailidou said on Sunday while attending the 49th regular meeting of the Pan Cyprus Federation of Student Unions (POFEN), which was held in the lobby of the POED building in Nicosia.
Asked where the process for installing air conditioners in schools is, Ms Michailidou said, “Apart from policy decisions on the issue, all electromechanical studies are done individually for each school and each class”. She said the agreement for the first province, Nicosia, has been signed and installation will begin in the coming days, with several schools to be equipped with air conditioners by September next year.
Ms. Michailidou also mentioned that through the process of the first few months, “we will automatically be able to work with other schools because we will use the funds to install air conditioners.” She noted that school environmental improvements are still ongoing.
Regarding the process for the start of the new academic year, the Minister of Education said, “We are making very good progress; we have also recently held a meeting with the Education Services Commission and progress has been made on staffing issues. This year we recorded the requirements very early so that the academic year can start without staffing issues.”
He added that “most of the books are already there so there won’t be a problem on the first day”.
He also pointed out that training will start at the end of August this year, and said that the new school year will also start with the innovation of new projects that have been announced, such as financial literacy, the upgrading and expansion of German, and tutoring in primary schools.
Strategies to upgrade higher education in the coming days
Ms Michailidou said of the POFEN meeting: “I am very happy to represent the Government today at the POFEN Annual Meeting. For us this meeting is very important as all the student organisations in our universities are represented.”
He noted that the issue of higher education is one of the priorities of the Ministry of Education and said a multi-level strategy to improve and upgrade higher education has been announced which will be released in a few days.
He added, “We will attach great importance to listening to their concerns, their demands and especially their suggestions for improving the higher education sector in our country”.
Asked to comment on the requirement for Cypriot universities to offer undergraduate programmes in English, Ms Michailidou said the issue would soon be referred to the Legal Services Department and then to Parliament for a final decision.
He noted that the priority was equal treatment of academic institutions, saying that “public universities should be able to offer foreign language study programmes, so part of our strategy is to upgrade and support public higher education as well as private higher education”.
Next weekend, the positions of various universities will be announced
When asked when the Cypriot higher education institutions’ positions are expected to be announced, Mrs. Michaeldou said that the next weekend, probably July 19, will be the day to announce the results. He added that the results for the Greek universities’ positions will be announced at the end of August.
Source: KYPE
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