του Αβέρωφ Νεοφύτου
The imposition of price ceilings is the refuge of those who can not manage the market economy. AKEL and the government are trying to promote the introduction of price ceilings in various products and services as a solution to address higher prices. Unfortunately, the government and AKEL do not realize that such practices not only do not address profiteering phenomena but hide the real problems.
The question that should trouble us in the issue of the tuition fees of private secondary schools is the problem of the quality of the public education offered by the state and not the amount of tuition. If you think that more and more parents choose private education for their children, then it shows that parents no longer have confidence in the system of public education. And that is the question that should trouble the government and all of us, not the fees of private schools.
In addition, private schools do not impose a burden on the state budget and the Cypriot taxpayer does not have to pay for these fees. It is a personal choice of every parent to send their children in a private school, while the state provides free education, and to bear the costs involved. What should the government ensure is the quality of the curriculum and the state of the buildings and teaching facilities and in addition that every parent should know in advance how much the cost of private education will be to complete, so that he or she should be in a position to calculate his budget and decide on their available options.
It would be unreasonable to require the state to cap the fees when public education is costing the Cypriot taxpayer much more. The average cost per pupil in Primary education was €6,082 in 2008 while the average education cost per student in secondary education was €9,805 and the cost of Technical Education was €13,791 per student. University education was costing €23,714 per student in 2008. From the numbers alone we can observe that public education involves much higher costs than private education. And of course not only nobody addresses the issue of the cost of public education, but calls are made by almost everyone to increase public spending on education.
If we just compare numbers, we see that the cost of private education is much lower than the burden on citizens from public education. Private universities cost students approximately €9,000 per academic year in 2010. This is in contrast to the State University of Cyprus, where the cost per student (in 2008 prices) was €23,714. The same goes for private secondary education. On average tuition at a private secondary school for 2010 is approximately €6,500 for each year of schooling, while the cost per pupil in public education is €9,350 for high schools, €9,645 for lyceums and €13,791 for technical schools and professional education. So we are just being hypocritical by supporting the introduction of a cap on fees in private schools, while the cost of public education is much higher. After all, those who choose private education do so consciously rejecting the free public education provided by the state.
It is clear that the problems we must confront are the quality of public education and its cost, which is significantly higher than the private sector.
Our economy should be driven by free market rules and the state should provide conditions for fair competition to thrive. This can only be done through the shielding of institutions and the strengthening the role of the Commission for the Protection of Competition. The imposition of the cap only creates additional distortions in the market which will be paid by the Cypriot consumer. AKEL should not forget that the only thing they managed to achieve in the recent imposition of a ceiling on retail fuel prices was to create huge queues at petrol stations and the only result had been the suffering of the Cypriot consumer, while purchasing oil and gasoline at the highest price.
