Teachers wait until their 50s for a permanent post

The average age of the 3,600 newly appointed teachers and the 140,000 permanent teachers is over 50, according to data seen by Kathimerini, a stark illustration of one of the many distortions of the Greek secondary education system.

The reason for this is that teachers are appointed to public schools based on their years as substitutes and their master’s degrees, so tend to invest years into gathering points for a permanent posting.

For example, newly appointed physicists have an average age of just over 49, while the average age of those already appointed is over 56.

In general, teachers in their 50s have been waiting for at least 15 years to finally get a much-coveted appointment from the Education Ministry.

The highest average age is for teachers in physics (56.54 years), followed by geology (54.58 years), chemistry (54.18 years), math (53.78 years) and philology (52.86 years).