Crunch time for education

The findings of a recent study by an agency of the Education Ministry into the performance of Greece’s high school students are disheartening at best, as they confirm the image of a failed national education system.

One of its most frightening conclusions is that around half of the country’s secondary school pupils are functionally illiterate.

This situation is proof of the impasses that a system becomes trapped in when it remains stagnant and introverted, when it does not have such basic things as performance evaluations, further education for teachers, and the flexibility to embrace developments and introduce new teaching methods.

Teachers are frontline civil servants and need to become the agents of radical change.