The ludicrous ‘referendum’, held by the secondary teachers union Oelmek, overwhelmingly rejected the bill that would introduce a new system of evaluation of the work of each teacher. A total of 5,286 teachers (92 per cent) voted against the bill, which the leadership of the union had rejected weeks ago, because it did not like it.

After the announcement of the result, Oelmek called on the government “to heed the clear position of the teaching world and withdraw the bill so there could at last be a substantive dialogue.” It then urged the education minister “to show the necessary respect to the democratic procedures, to teachers and organisations that represent them, respect which she did not show in the preceding period and especially in the run-up to the referendum.”

The audacity of the union has no limits. Since when does a union have the democratic right to hold a referendum and reject a bill submitted by the executive that was democratically elected? What respect is Oelmek showing for the constitutional right of the executive to make decisions about state education policy? And what respect has it shown to Education Minister Athena Michaelidou, whom the union had viciously attacked in writing, because it did not approve of evaluation scheme drafted by the ministry?

Having a referendum among teachers that do not want their work assessed, because they are accustomed to getting a top mark for their work, regardless of how poor it is, would only have produced one result. Why weren’t parents asked to vote in this referendum as they should have a say in how the teachers of their children are evaluated? In fact, every person who pays taxes should have a say on how teachers are assessed because we pay their generous wages and have the right to ensure we are getting good value for our money.

The fact is that the teaching unions have opposed the introduction of a proper job evaluation system for a couple of decades, refusing even to discuss it. Realising this refusal could no longer be justified, they agreed to the idea, but demanded they have the final say over how their performance would be assessed. In other words, through their proposals they would ensure the new assessment system would be as ineffective as the old one. After all, the teaching unions do not want their members assessed, and this would be their objective in the dialogue they want to have about the bill with the ministry.

The move of the president of the House education committee, Pavlos Mylonas, to invite the unions to talk about the bill at the committee was incredibly irresponsible. He even declared the dialogue would last until the end of the year, undermining the education minister who wanted the bill passed before the legislature’s summer recess, so the evaluation system could be introduced at the start of the school year. If we wait until the end of the year the introduction of the system will be delayed another year and, worse still, it would be cut to the measures demanded by the teaching unions. Incidentally, there will be parliamentary elections next May, so the parties would go out of their way to satisfy unions representing some 15,000 votes, a few months before these elections.

It is imperative that the government prevents the House education committee taking over the dialogue with self-serving teaching unions and sidelining the education ministry which has put in a lot of work preparing the new system which wants to improve teaching standards and reward good teaching. None of the teaching unions want this to happen as their objective is to protect all their members by championing mediocrity.

This is why it is of utmost importance that the government wins this dispute, something that can only happen by the bill being passed unchanged. The time has come for the teaching unions to understand that public education is not their private business which they can run whichever way they choose. Teachers are employees and their employer – the education ministry – has the right to decide how the work performance of its employees should be assessed. The ministry needs to make this point to the parties very forcefully, in order to get them on side and create a united front against teaching unions who have always promoted the interests of their members at the expense of the students.