A law, in place since 2009, allows public universities to offer excess places to students with internationally recognized qualifications of access, such as the IB and A-levels. In the 13 years this law has been in force it has never been implemented because the specific administrative regulations have yet to be approved. Does it really take 13 years for basic administrative regulations to be drafted and approved, or has the whole project been shelved because teaching unions are opposed to it?

Refusing to wait any longer, a delegation of parents and guardians of children attending private schools, gave education minister Prodromos Prodromou and House education committee chairman Pavlos Mylonas, a memo requesting the implementation of the law. The group has also posted the memo on the internet so that all parents and guardians, with children at private schools could sign it. Signing a petition demanding implementation of an existing law belongs to the realm of the absurd, not in a state with rule of law.

This is another symptom of the union rule that plagues Cyprus. Teaching unions, supported by the parties that share Akel’s communist values, have been vehemently opposed to students from private schools being admitted to public universities, on the strength of grades obtained in internationally-recognised exams. They argue that entry to public universities should be based exclusively on the results of the national exams that all public school leavers sit, for the sake of equality.

The previous rector of the Cyprus University, had tried to open up admissions to private school students but was blocked by teaching unions in collaboration with the parties, all of which embraced the communist stance – privileged students, whose parents can afford to send them to private school, should be barred from public universities – although they never said this openly. They ignore the fact that parents and guardians of private school students also pay taxes to the state which funds public universities.

Their children have as much right to study at the Cyprus University as public school students. As long as they have a good command of the Greek language and good grades in internationally-recognised exams, there should be no obstacle to entry. It is not even as if this would reduce places for public school students since the law stipulates, in a blatant case of discrimination, that only excess places would be allocated to private school students – in other words those left empty because there were no public school applicants that scored the required grades. The virtuous socialists would rather leave the available places vacant than give them to the supposedly privileged students.

It is a disgraceful situation that needs to end. But it will require the education minister and a few parties defying the militant teaching unions, that must understand they do not own the public universities nor are they entitled to a say in which students the universities accept.