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    Councils of parents and guardians of several sports schools in the region of Athens, will hold a protest in front of the Ministry of Education next Thursday. In it will take part parents, students and teachers, and the message will be sent to as many schools as possible in order to be informed of the upcoming events. According to data of the ministry during the past academic year students in sports schools throughout the country were 12,060 and the teachers were 2,036. All their activities cost the state budget 25 million euros. Out off this amount, the cost of transportation of the students were about 2.4 million euros.
    The decision of the ministry mentioned that next year the connection between the 145 schools and sports will be revised. "We put the student - athlete in the center of our attention. The development of the sports talent is going happen along with an appropriate education so that students - athletes to keep up with the studies of their classmates". Until then students - athletes from the closed sports classes will be moved into mainstream classes in their schools or in any other school they want.
    According to the Federation of secondary education figures, however, the ministry also intends to close down the schools with lower number of students which are located mainly in mountainous areas. Then the children will have to be transported to municipal centers with buses and taxis using the not so good road network in these places, and along with this, teachers with temporary contracts or hourly wage will be left unemployed.
    Members of the union believe that along with the closure of the sports classes around 2000 teachers of physical education will remain unemployed, and starting with the next year about 4500 teachers in all subjects with temporary contracts will not enter the classrooms. Forecasts of the union for the future of education in Greece in those conditions are pretty bleak and they believe that the economic policy of the government will reduce to a great extent the quality of education, "although our country has never been renowned for its great achievements, unfortunately".
    The Federation of secondary schools figures will participate in the common Greek strike of the union next Wednesday and programmed their own protest after the holidays.