“There is no sane person who believes that I may have said in the Parliament that we should merge the schools because the children should walk more because that’s what the WHO says. It is precisely this contrast that I wanted to show, it’s very easy to create impressions, but that’s not what I said”said the Deputy Minister of Education Domna Michailidou on Wednesday morning to SKAI and the program ‘ATERIASTOI’.

“The thing is what is best for child protection and the educational processlet’s not lose our sanity,” he added.

“School mergers are and will be for the good of the childrento have teachers of all specialties, teachers of French, German, children who are properly socialized, to have more extroversion and to offer them the educational services of an integrated school”said Ms. Michailidou.

Regarding her statement in Parliament in response to Katerina Notopoulou, she added: “The example of the parliament was an example that in the worst of cases, middle school and high school children will have to walk 1.5 km to go to school. There are our fellow citizens who think that every block should have a school, a university, a hospital, this is not possible. The state quite rightly provides that when the distances are longer, i.e. 3 km for Middle School children and 5 km for High School children then he puts forward the competition in each district so that the district puts in for the children to go to school.”

“Mergers are done in the best interests of the children”she clarified.

Finally, the Deputy Minister of Education emphasized: “The most a high school student has to walk is 1.5 km. We think that it is much better for a child to be in a school that has been merged and will have access to all the educational services, all the extraversion, all the groups, than the 1.5 km walk.”