Parents show keen interest in model public schools
More than 20,000 applications were submitted for 4,442 places in the 2023-2024 academic year at Greece’s public model and experimental schools, an old institution expanded in 2011, all but abolished by the leftist-led SYRIZA government in 2015, and reinstated by center-right New Democracy in 2019.
“The interest of parents is as high as it is because the teaching staff are very highly qualified,” Dora Kountoura, a philologist at an experimental high school in northern Athens, tells Kathimerini. “Educators have the freedom to experiment in these schools and to organize education programs.”
Greece has 120 such schools – whose purpose is to promote innovative teaching methods and advanced curriculums and to provide pupils with a high academic performance more opportunities – from 62 in 2019 and also plans to add an additional 18 for the academic year starting September 2024.
