"It is the state's duty to safeguard for all the Greeks the right to free education, at all levels of our educational system", said Education Minister Constantine Arvanitopoulos.(The Minister said the obvious. Shame on the university for not accepting this gifted student because of a handicap!)
He added that "for this reason we are reconsidering the provisions that cause injustices often and render it difficult for persons of vulnerable groups of the population to access knowledge, while we are working for the provision of necessary supportive infrastructures and modern technological equipment so that all will have the same opportunities in our educational system".
Meanwhile, the Secretary General for Transparency and Human Rights Georgios Sourlas asked the Physics department to approve the petition for enrollment of Koumtzis. Sourlas underlined that that the university's attitude towards the blind student constitutes a discrimination, especially as the corresponding departments in the Athens and Ioannina universities accept students who are blind or physically handicapped.
"It is directly opposed to human rights and violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Constitution," Sourlas said, commenting on the university's decision to reject the student's application. Current legislation demands "equal treatment for everyone, regardless of disability, and provides special care for people with disability," Sourlas added.The secretary general had also called on the Education minister to intervene and "re-evaluate the institutional framework regarding the admission of students with disabilities at universities, in order to eliminate any discrimination, and to ensure the right of equal access to all levels of education."
According to existing legislation, the responsibility admitting a student with special needs to university lies with the department itself. As a result, the decision is arbitrary, depending on the school.
On the subject of education, the education community in uproar over a series of recent police visits to a number of schools, with teachers and parents alleging that in some cases, school students were called to provide explanations regarding school occupations.
Alleging is one thing, but orders are another. The Central Police HQ recently issued an order for police departments to visit local schools in order to document any problems or demands. Police officials were instructed to “establish personal contacts and meetings with school principles” and report back any findings.
The Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper noted in one report that there are many cases where police officers actually harassed elementary and nursery school teachers over the phone, (but as we have said many times in the past Greek newspapers lie, especially those of a progressive Leftist nature).
And just to back up our argument, which party do you think slammed these visits?
You guessed it: SYRIZA.
SYRIZA condemned the visits saying that they were an “unacceptable tactic" aimed at "turning schools into places of manipulation, control and terror". In their opinion, which we all know is a free-for-all where police authorities do not exist, the surveillance of schools falls under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education only.
(We can just see it now... Education Ministry officials running to catch the bad guys at schools with staplers in their hands!)
Oh yeah... SYRIZA also had to throw the word "democratic" in there somewhere, and said that any intervention of the Ministry of Public Order "constitutes an antidemocratic aberration from orderly educational function”.
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