What changes in schools in the new school year

“All the processes for the completely smooth start of the new school year have been launched” assures, speaking to APE-MPE, the general secretary of Primary, Secondary Education and Special Education of the Ministry of Education, Alexander Koptsis.

The new developments that the members of the educational community will encounter from this year are the extension of the All-Day School until 17:30, the implementation of the Subject Bank in the 3rd grade of the Lyceum and the introduction of diagnostic tests (Greek Pisa) in all schools. Also, as Mr. Koptsis mentions, the evaluation of the teachers begins.

Extended Full Day School

The upgrade of the All-Day School will begin in the new school year. As a pilot program, the program will be carried out in approximately 50% of the departments that operate today as full-day, i.e. in almost 5,000 kindergarten and elementary school departments in Athens, Thessaloniki and the surrounding area. The opening hours will be extended from 16:00, which was valid until today, to 17:30.

Parents will be informed of all the details regarding the enrollment of their children in the extended Full Day in the first days of September and before the start of classes, by the principals of the school units, the ministry explains.

“With rich new topics, with study at school, we upgrade the All-Day program, make the time the students stay in it constructive, and give additional support to the family”, describes Mr. Koptsis.

Subject Bank

Last year, the Subject Bank was applied to the 1st and 2nd grade promotion exams of all types of Lyceum. This year it will also be added to the 3rd Lyceum for the final exams.

“We have successfully implemented the Subject Bank for the 1st and 2nd grade of Lyceum as a reservoir of knowledge, experience, teaching practices and feedback for teachers and students”, Mr. Koptsis points out.

The Graded Difficulty Subject Bank is an information base from which 50% of the subjects are selected by lottery, while the remaining 50% is selected by the teacher of each course. By decision of the Institute of Educational Policy, it is determined in which subjects, during the drawing of lots, subjects are selected and in which subjects a section of subjects is selected.

Greek Pisa

Last year, 6,000 6th grade Primary and 3rd Grade High School students from 600 schools in the country, 300 Primary and 300 High Schools, took part in the exams in Modern Greek Language and Mathematics.

This year the application will be universal, always in the last grade of Primary and High School, as the aim is to capture the basic knowledge that students must have mastered in Primary and High School, “with the aim of evaluating our education system and shaping conditions for its improvement”, emphasizes Mr. Koptsis.

Evaluation

Last year, the self-evaluation of the school unit took place, “whose sole objective is to upgrade and improve the operation of the school units”, Mr. Koptsis points out.

The teachers’ federations had expressed reactions to the way in which school units are evaluated, mainly on the basis that the “categorization of schools” is being promoted.

Mr. Koptsis comments on this, that “it is a fact that the many and essential innovations created to a certain extent reactions, sometimes larger and sometimes smaller, unnecessarily, perhaps due to a lack of complete information by some, perhaps deliberately and deliberately in some cases, perhaps by fear of the new and unknown”.

In the new school year, the implementation of teacher evaluation begins. It is “a feedback process that aims to contribute to the improvement of the work produced without any impact on the teachers”, he clarifies.

New Study Programs

During the 2022-2023 school year, the pilot implementation of the New Curricula will continue in all Standard and Experimental schools of the country. In 2023-2024, the New Study Programs will be implemented universally, with the simultaneous start of the implementation of the “multiple book” except for the 2nd and 3rd Lyceum. It will be implemented in the 2nd high school in the 2024-2025 school year and in the 3rd high school in 2025-2026.

“The 116 New Study Programs, 123 newly prepared and 43 updated, express a new, different philosophy of approaching knowledge, differentiating the how and the why of learning”, notes Mr. Koptsis and adds: “We doubled the Standard and Experimental schools and we apply the New Curricula to them with the aim of disseminating these good practices to all schools in the country”.

Skills Workshops

At the same time, the Skills Workshops, which were implemented for the first time in September 2021 in the mandatory timetable of all Kindergartens, Primary and High Schools, continue.

The aim of the Skills Workshops is, according to the ministry, “to strengthen students’ transversal skills and core competencies, including digital skills, critical thinking, problem-solving skills and the ability to learn”, through the introduction of new topics such as robotics, entrepreneurship, road safety, sex education, ecological awareness, etc.

Appointments and vacancies

“Our goal is to gradually eliminate the phenomenon of substitutes from permanent appointments”, points out Mr. Koptsis and notes that in the last two and a half years, 25,000 teachers have been appointed. “We have covered all the organic gaps in Secondary Education and there are few organic gaps left in Primary and Special Education.”

“We introduced inclusive education into our design, appointing a large number of special education teachers and introducing new digital educational material for students with disabilities. Also, with an excellent planning, we integrated all the refugee students into the Greek educational community by establishing Reception and DYEP departments, at the same time hiring and training teachers for our refugee students” says the Minister of Primary, Secondary Education and Special Education and adds:

“This year, in an excellent collaboration with the co-competent Ministries of Interior, Finance and Development, we are creating conditions to cover all the gaps from the beginning of the school year. We are fully prepared and we are in the final stage so that on August 31 all the teachers will be in their place, the books on their desks and all our reform work in place”.

Regarding the phenomenon of teachers working in two or three schools in the same area, Mr. Koptsis explains: “Some specialties do not complete their schedule in one school because there are few hours available to teach some subjects or because there are additional teachers in this specialty. These teachers must complete the schedule. Care is taken to employ these teachers in schools where minimal travel is required, i.e. in neighboring schools”.

RES-EMP

Read the News today and get the latest news. Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.