Cyprus has an obligation to offer children with special needs opportunities to further their education or enter the world of work once they complete their compulsory education, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Friday during a visit to a school in Nicosia.
“We have the minimum obligation – it is the minimum we can do – to offer all our children the same opportunities, and for our children who are in special education, we have already started a dialogue with the participation of many ministries,” he said.
Those ministries, he said, include the education ministry, the social welfare deputy ministry, the health ministry, and the commerce ministry.
To this end, he highlighted the participation of the commerce ministry in those dialogues, saying that “we also want businesses” to be involved in discussions regarding the provision of future opportunities to children with special needds.
“We want to help children with whatever they want. That is why I want to discuss with them, when they finish school, if they want to follow further education, to offer that to them. We have an obligation as a state to offer them the opportunity to either pursue more education or go directly to work,” he said.
He then added that he wished to say “what I have been repeating constantly since the first day we took over the governance of the country, and that we show in practice with cabinet decisions”.
“Health and education are not being approached as areas where we are looking to make savings, or an economic policy. These are areas where each of our decisions is approached as an investment in the future of our country, but also as a basic obligation to offer our children … wherever they are, in whichever situation they find themselves, the same opportunities,” he said.
On this matter, he pointed out that the government had last year extended the provision of special education to include individuals with special needs up to the age of 22 years old, but stressed that “this is not a permanent solution”.
“We have worked out other ideas which we will announce before September, because children in special education, too, if they wish to study after completing school, should have the opportunity to do so. Or, if they wish to work, we as a state should create that framework to facilitate that choice,” he said.
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