Education Minister Athena Michaelidou committed her ministry to building new schools and upgrading existing ones in the town and district of Larnaca.

Speaking during a visit to the town’s Pancyprian Lyceum, she announced a new €33 million project to construct a technical school and said moves would also be made to build a new pre-school for Livadia and Oroklini.

These new schools, she said, will open in tandem with upgrades to existing schools.

Upgrade projects include “general improvements” worth €5.3m at the Evryviadio middle school, a new canteen and sanitary facilities worth €305,000 at the Ayios Georgios primary school, and €413,000 worth of maintenance, improvement and expansion for the Pancyprian Lyceum and the Ayios Spyridon special school.

In addition, plans are afoot to implement upgrades at the Vergina high school and the Drosia middle school, with a decision pending regarding a combined STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), sports, and music middle school on the site of the former Dianellio technical school.

As well as infrastructure upgrades, Michaelidou announced that a museum for the Pancyprian Lyceum would be opened in the old school building, “with the aim of highlighting the school’s historical standing and the history of Cypriot education.”

The museum, she said, will be “interconnected” with the school’s educational programmes, and will also be open to the public.