About the 10,000 permanent and direct recruitments in education that were announced yesterday – the most that have been made – the Minister of Education, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, spoke today as a guest on SKAI.

The appointments concern all levels – kindergartens, elementary, high schools – and the teachers will be in their positions before September.

Emphasis, however, has been placed on special education and secondary education.

“A part – about 4,500 – is from the regular recruitment planning of the Ministry of Education. The rest come from ASEP’s tables from the 40,000 substitute teachers, who will cover permanent, organic needs”.

As the minister said, among other things, the recruitments will cover the gaps of retirements while the resources given to the deputies will be used to make permanent recruitments.

According to Mr. Pierrakakis, “all specialties benefit from this development. Emphasis will be placed on special education and special teaching staff. Priority will also be given to Secondary Education. In the coming years, the same will happen to the other educational levels, so that the entire school structure is covered.”

“The government’s concern for the student and for the areas with major problems is daily and very great. In fact, we are starting to deal with school buildings as well, because the interactive boards are very good, they connect education with the new era, but the plasters are also important”, he added.

The “Digital tutoring” for the students of the remote areas is in operation

As the minister then mentioned, the “Digital tutoring center” for the students of the remote areas is already in operation, with material from the Language and Mathematics courses of the High School.

In September, the “Digital tutoring” for Panhellenic students will also be operational, with exam preparation material.

Regarding the digital classes, he emphasized that they will be established in specific areas with the following procedure: The physical presence of three teachers of the basic courses will be provided in the field with the simultaneous digital coverage of the remaining courses.

“The digital classroom cannot function only digitally, the physical presence of the teacher is needed, the digital coverage of the material will be supplementary,” he clarified.

For nationwide

Regarding the nationwide exams, the Minister of Education noted: “In the nationwide exams, absolute performance is not what counts, they are exams for the ranking of students in schools. This has been the case since the establishment of the nationwide exams. The nationwide exams remain an unchanging ranking competition. This year, as candidates’ performance worsened in Physics, they improved in other subjects in the field, so that while there are headlines about “slaughter”, the final picture of performance may be completely or somewhat different. We need to revisit some things in the exams and before that or alongside that we need to see improvements in the school from the first day a child enters to the last.”

For the operation of private universities

Finally, regarding the establishment of private universities, he revealed that “we are very close to the establishment of branches of foreign private universities in Greece, as there is great interest from American and European educational institutions, there are more than one”, referring to the short future for official announcements.

Mr. Pierrakakis made a special reference to joint master’s degrees of Greek public universities with major foreign universities, clarifying that this master’s degree will normally count in the labor market.

“In Florence, there are 41 branches of American universities, most of them with reference to architecture, and they operate in the form of a six-month program. In Greece, why can’t we have done it for Archeology and Philosophy?”, concluded the Minister of Education.