Student plenum of Bitola University (UKLO) today submitted demands and legal arguments against the state exam to the Rector of the university. In the demands, students wrote that the Student Parliament should be canceled because it doesn’t represent students’ rights and because its structure can be easily pressured. Regarding the concept of the state exam, students from Bitola say that as it is composed by the Ministry of Education, it is not in accordance with the Constitution, in particular article which projects the inviolability of the Constitution.
– State institutions again allow themselves to make serious changes in the system. According to the submitted draft decision, the special conditions for the manner and procedure for performing the state exam for students, the proposal of the Board for Accreditation and Evaluation, will be determined by the Minister of Education and Science. The way of formulating this future jurisdiction of the Minister leads to the conclusion that the Minister will get too wide jurisdiction in the direct decision making – read the demands of the students.
SDSM also reacted to the draft measures passed by the Government at the session on Saturday. Its representatives say that the Government and the Ministry were afraid and therefore they wanted to rush ahead the faculties which everyday publicly said that they are against the state exam.
– Out of this reason, the rushed, heady and illogical educational changes, in which the Government packed the so-called state exam, were passed over the weekend and Abdilakim Ademi and Spiro Ristovski had to clumsily justify them on Sunday afternoon. After the massive student protests with 10.000 participants and the express broad support, the forceful imposition of the contrary attitude means only one thing. Government yesterday announced that it declares a war to the society. To students, teachers, professors, everyone! Thus, they showed their fear of social conciseness – say representatives of SDSM.
The opposition party demanded the Government and the Ministry of Education to immediately withdraw the new rash changes and stop making decisions without experts and which are contrary to the will of the citizens of Macedonia.
Student plenum still hasn’t provided their opinion on the measures. They say they are still looking into the new proposed measures and that is not fair to comment before the detailed review.
President of the Trade Union of Education, Science and Culture (SONK) told us that it is best to call him tomorrow in order to give him some time to review the decisions.
According to information from the Ministry of Education, the new legal measures which were yesterday announced by Minister Abilakjim Ademi and his deputy Spiro Ristovski will be placed on the website of the ministry, and the faculties and universities will have to state their opinion on every proposed measure.
Professor Mirjana Najchevska says that this is an attempt of the Government to minimize the opinion of professors and that the Government wants to kill several birds with one stone.
– Faculties’ opinion on the state exam was pointless, because they will now have to do the same thing all over again. I think this will divide the teachers, because they will need to discuss several measures and will be difficult to achieve a consensus – stated Najchevska.
