National days of action for "Unified, public, free of charge education for all"

New actions, strikes, marches and demonstrations demanding an exclusively public, free of charge and united education responding to the needs of working people and not of the entrepreneurs will take place in all major cities on 9 and 10 January.

On this day the Greek Parliament will debate the amendment of the Article 16 of the Greek Constitution which is an obstacle for the establishment of private universities in Greece.

The amendment was introduced after an agreement etween the right wing ruling party of New Democracy and the social democratic, main opposition party, PASOK.

The move provoked already broad popular protest including rejection by the teachers', professors', parents' and students' national unions.

Communist Party of Greece, KNE, PAME and a lot of popular organizations and unions expressed long time before total opposition to the abolishment of article 16 as well as to all other measures introduced by the New Democracy party aiming at the privatization of the education.

The same was once again underlined by Aleka Papariga, General Secretary of CC of KKE during a press conference on 8 January.

These issues were protested during the large movements in May 2006 which obliged the government to suspend the discussion in Parliament of the new law for education.

For KKE, other European communist parties and progressive people involved in education these issues are common for many countries as it showed in the online petition http://edu4all.kke.gr

On 7 January the Athens Federation of Parents, the Coordination of the Athens Schools, the Athens Federation of Small Enterprises, and class oriented trade unions and many student associations released an appeal and announced actions on 9 January against the amendment of article 16.

This appeal was already signed by thousands of university professors, teachers, unionists, intellectuals and other people.

The appeal contains demands rejecting:

• Any step establishing private universities
• The draft for the new law reforming the public education
• The measures for "decentralisation» and transfer of education duties to the local authorities.
• The «flexible zone" in the education and other regulations aiming at the differentiation of schools and education programmes.
• Any kind of business in the field of education
• The new school books since their content does not correspond to the scientific and pedagogical principles and finally
• The authors of the appeal express their engagement for a “unified, public, and free of charge education for all”.
  
  
  
  e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr