The open school, the free university and Higher Vocational Training are the three main goals of the Ministry of Education for the new year, accelerating the pace of educational reforms with targeted actions, as stated by the Minister of Education, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, from the Plenary floor. , during the 2024 budget debate.

At the same time, he announced that “targeted vocational training will be the first piece of legislation to be submitted to the Parliament in the new year”.

“The budget for education is increased by 255 million euros compared to last year, while compared to 2019, the increase is more than 15%. This reflects the prime minister’s interest and the government’s overall commitment to speed up education and educational reforms by investing in it,” Mr. Pierrakakis pointed out.

Decoding the three main goals of the educational reform in the new year, Mr. Pierrakakis pointed out that they will build on what the government has done in the last 4 years.

As the Minister of Education said:

“The first objective is: To build 60 targeted “campus” type structures in vocational education throughout the country. To endow them with 114 million euros through the Recovery Fund, in new equipment in the professional workshops and with 130 new training guides in the IEK, i.e. New Professions which we will rename to Higher Vocational Training schools. The idea is for these “camps” to be able to operate more targeted, depending on the needs of each local community and in relation to the needs of the wider market.

Second objective is: The open school that has to do with all those reforms that take place, in the context of a world that runs, because the era of complacency is over. The age of curiosity must begin, so that we can learn from all those good examples that exist internationally and apply the best possible practices to do as well as possible.

In terms of primary and secondary education, our aim is to invest in schools more, with new books, multiple books from 2025, to go lesson by lesson, school by school and make very targeted changes and be able to the school a generator of social capital with more volunteering and to be assigned”.

Mr. Pierrakakis gave special emphasis to the third objective which, as he said, “government policy is the free university, because it must be freed from the shackles of state bureaucracy and state monopoly”.

“We believe that the public university is the flagship of this strategy. The internationalization of the public university, which has started very strongly in the last 4 years, will continue with intensity. The goal is to enable the majority of the 40,000 Greek students currently studying abroad to find their educational destiny in our country and at the same time to be able to bring as many foreign students here as possible.

We must be able to provide even small programs to foreign students by public universities,” Mr. Pierrakakis pointed out and added:

“By doing this and investing through the Recovery Fund, very significant and targeted sums in public universities, we will liberate the field of higher education and the state monopoly.

And this is of great interest, to do this with rules, orderly, functionally and with very strict criteria”.

Mr. Pierrakakis chose to close his speech with an article by Thomas Friedman that he had written as soon as Greece had signed the first memorandum which said:

“I will not follow all these terminologies, I will not look at the microeconomic figures for how Greece is doing. I will look at something else, about what the young Greeks are doing. If you see them leaving, sell Greek bonds. If you see them staying and some coming, start buying.”

“This has started to reverse in recent years. We all have the national duty, we all have the responsibility to reverse it further so that we can release the total potential of our country in which education actually plays a very big role, not only social and economic but the strength of our country” , concluded Mr. Pierrakakis.

Reactions of parties and response of the Minister of Education

The reactions of the parliamentary representatives of SYRIZA, PASOK and Plefsis Eleftherias were caused by the educational reforms announced by the Minister of Education, characterizing them as visionary but doubtful.

The parliamentary representative of SYRIZA, Theofilos Xanthopoulos, noted that the speech of the Minister of Education may have had a visionary character, however it is far from its implementation, while nothing was heard about the strengthening of the public open university.

The parliamentary representative of PASOK-KINAL, Michalis Katrinis, emphasized that “in order for the necessary educational reforms to really proceed, a substantial institutional dialogue needs to be held and the appropriate resources provided, which is however not reflected in the new budget”.

The parliamentary representative of Plefsis Eleftherias, Alexandros Kazamias, emphasized that Greece is well below the EU average in spending on education and close to the last places.

In response, Mr. Pierrakakis countered that “we all need to look more openly and responsibly at the educational reform and how the country will move forward”. noting that the bill he will submit to Parliament for vocational training will be an opportunity for everyone to have an open and hypocritical discussion.