Sírigos for artists: Within two months, the proposals of the three special committees

The government is looking for a solution to the issue of grading and upgrading the diplomas of graduates of vocational schools, with the Deputy Minister of Education, Angelos Syrigos stating that “the possibilities that exist are many” and assuring that “within the next two months the three committees that have already been set up they will have completed their work and will submit their proposals”.

Responding in the Parliament, to a relevant topical question by PASOK-KINAL MP, Dimitris Konstantopoulos, who called on the government “to provide an immediate solution to the problem of performing arts graduates, Mr. Syrigos admitted that “indeed these people are held hostage and it is all the responsibility the political system and all the previous governments because none of them touched this tragic issue”.

“What I emphasize is that for the first time we have seriously dealt with this matter. This is what I want all the people who have been on the streets lately to take into consideration. I absolutely respect their work, but they must understand that it is a chronic situation for which we are now sitting down to face it seriously, for the first time, after 40 years”, said Mr. Syrigos and added:

“We decided to take the issue seriously. There is no equivalent at the university level to do the grading. We are looking to see how we can upgrade and upgrade existing studies in the performing arts. Three committees have already been formed which must complete their work within the next two months. They will have to look at and process all this set of provisions that exist and come up with proposals on what to do.”

As Mr. Syrigos mentioned, “the possibilities that exist are many”.

“There are already state schools that deal with these issues. We have the example of the Academy of Fine Arts, which does not accept students through the Panhellenic exam system but based on their talent, because this is the crucial point in the performing arts, so we will look at this whole and have proposals so that by 2025 to be able to move on to the next step which will be the creation of tertiary university education in the performing arts. In what way and what they will propose, I cannot know because the facts are really different between the actors, the dancers, the conservatories. We also have university faculties, such as music departments for example, which cover some of these performing arts subjects.

So we have to look at the totality of things and see how we will be able to move forward”, explained the Deputy Minister of Education.

For his part, Mr. Konstantopoulos underlined that “the hostage taking of the artists must be stopped and an immediate solution to their just request to have their degrees recognized as the higher education they have received” while accusing the government of “not trying to give a fair, rational solution to the problem.”

“The 2022 DP comes and perpetuates the problem instead of solving it. The drama schools have already submitted a request for the cancellation of the PD to the Council of Ministers and invoke the distinction of the forms of education based on Article 16 of the Constitution. After the upgrading of TEIs to ATEIs it seems that the category of technological education was excluded and the state stopped the matching between the graduates of higher education schools and the category of TE. That is, a category that is between PE and University Education. After 2003, the graduates of the higher schools of three-year studies such as the National Theater, the State Theater of Northern Greece and the performing arts schools remained meteoric”, said Mr. Konstantopoulos.

“The state should see to the matching of their degrees and qualifications based on their higher education and not treat them as DEs so that this injustice can be rectified. There is a gap in the law and the citizens cannot pay for the inadequacy of the state. The just demand of the artists must be resolved and this injustice corrected with the cooperation of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Interior so that graduates of higher education schools receive the match they are entitled to. To join the TE intermediate category which actually does not exist today. In other words, to have their three-year studies recognized as higher education which is not identical to secondary education or higher education.

But what we see in the Presidential Decree is that there is a complete absence of any category corresponding to their studies. It needs to be fixed by including the TE category but also revise the national qualifications framework in such a way that there is higher and higher education. Those graduates of the higher schools can and must have the right to assimilate their three-year studies through the program and the courses they will attend, with the corresponding university departments”, concluded Mr. Konstantopoulos.

“When we found that “the king is naked”, i.e. that these schools are ungraded, a series of moves were made by the government”, the Deputy Minister of Education countered and added:

“You said to make these graduates equivalent to level 6 which is university education. How will we do it? With private schools? If you want us to do something like that, then let’s change the Constitution and put extremely strict conditions on how private individuals can operate to provide university education. But at the moment, as the Constitution stands, level 6 university education is impossible to add from private schools. Perfect. It can’t be different.”

Mr. Syrigos also defended PD85 2022, stressing that “the employment of artists to provide purely artistic work to public sector bodies is expressly excluded from the scope of PD85”.

RES-EMP

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