Michaelidou asks for 5% increase to education ministry’s budget

Education Minister Athena Michaelidou on Friday asked the House finance committee to approve a five-per-cent increase to her ministry’s budget, which, if approved, will amount to just shy of €1.7 billion next year. “Through a coherent reform plan, we are seeking to free the education system from the logic of fragmented actions and are working towards a holistic framework, adopting a new culture of adequacy and efficiency,” she told the committee. She added that her ministry’s budget “serves this strategy precisely”, and is “a tool for implementing our reform policy, with clear priorities, targeted investments, scientific documentation, and continuous evaluation”. In this budget, she said, a total of €53 million has been allocated to school infrastructure, an increase of €10 million on this year’s budget, with her ministry “planning upgrades to school facilities and the implementation of 23 large-scale projects”. Additionally, she said the ministry is planning to implement a free breakfast programme for children, and that social workers will be deployed to schools with “high rates of delinquency” so as to “support pupils and families”. House education committee chairman and Diko MP Chrysanthos Savvides then lamented that “almost 90 per cent of the budget is allocated for teacher salaries”. He also criticised that “no government has put in place a plan for the creation of school classrooms or school buildings”, and said that because of this, schools are “overcrowded” and “overpopulated”. On this matter, he said that the rollout of portakabins to be used as classrooms is “a huge problem in the European Cyprus of 2026”.