Issue No. 13366

Education

 

 

THE BIGGEST shakeup of the country’s secondary school system in decades has been proposed by Yiorgos Babiniotis, one of Greece’s leading academics.

 

Students should forget memorisation, take up a musical instrument or other extracurricular activity and be required to research subjects using library books and the internet, a major report by Babiniotis recommends.

 

On November 20, the former Athens University rector and government-appointed chair of the national committee on secondary school education, personally presented the long-awaited report and its proposals to Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou.

 

“We are not reinventing the wheel,” Babiniotis told the Athens News. “We have furnished the education ministry with a package of well thought-out proposals that are firmly grounded - they are not unrealistic. They include measures that have worked in other countries.”

 

Babiniotis painted a disheartening picture of the country’s public education system. The problems are many. Learning by rote is one. So is the lack of exercises to promote problem-solving and critical thinking.

 

The high-stakes university entrance exam, the results of which determine where and whether a student may attend university, is another major problem. Babiniotis called it “unfair” and “inhuman” because it puts too much pressure on secondary school seniors and forces teachers to dumb down lessons and focus on memorisation.

 

“Students need a well-rounded education,” Babiniotis said. “This is why we are talking about a holistic and systemic approach to reforming our education system.”

 

 

 

Yiorgos Babiniotis: It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is the first time since the 1930s that we have proposals that are so well-worked and documented. The proposals are ambitious and bold. We are talking about a grassroots change.

 

We have to decide what we want to teach our children. We need to be instilling democratic values in our students, preparing them to be responsible citizens. We also need to teach students how to learn and how to solve problems and deal with daily life situations.

 

 

We held 16 lengthy sessions between March and November. We had political party representatives from Pasok, New Democracy and Laos sit at the table for the first time. Only the leftwing parties [Syriza and KKE] did not take part. And for the first time we had DOE [Federation of Greek primary school teachers], OIELE [Federation of Greek private school teachers], GSEE [General Confederation of Workers in Greece] and a large number of other stakeholders all come together.

 

And what was interesting is that there was no drop in turnout, which is usually the case in such dialogues. In fact, we had just the opposite. There was pressure and demand from people and organisations who wanted to participate, like university rectors and professors.

 

All this led to a real dialogue. None of the participants, including the political party representatives, came to get their views passed. It was a dialogue of substance on the measures that need to be taken. Our focus was on how to improve the quality of public education.

 

 

 

Everyone agreed that we are lacking in quality. Even though we started looking at how to improve the university entrance system, we also looked at the quality of education from kindergarten to the secondary school.

 

As far as I am concerned, we have to increase the quality of education so that our students gain three things: knowledge, critical thinking abilities and skills, not just theory but to be able to do things.

 

This is the goal. And how will the teacher achieve this? Teachers need to be trained continuously and they need to be given some freedom - breathing space in the classroom - so that they are not clinging to a strict curriculum.

 

The structure of the education system is another issue. We agreed that the basic mandatory education that today finishes at the end of middle school should be extended. The trend across Europe is for it to be extended from the bottom up - that is from the kindergarten. If children are to be integrated socially, it has to start early. This means two [mandatory] years of kindergarten.

 

The majority also agreed on the need to create another kind of secondary school. What do they want? We do not want a secondary school like a frondistirio [a private tutoring school], as is the case today. We want a secondary school that can offer more in terms of knowledge, including computer skills and advanced language learning. We do not want a school that simply prepares students to sit a university placement exam. This is not a school.

 

 

 

Students face a huge amount of stress and their parents have to spend a lot of money on frontistiria. It’s an inhuman examination system that puts a student’s whole future on the line.

 

The question is how to improve this situation. Firstly, from the moment that you have such a large number of university candidates, you need a selection process. You cannot have it any other way.

 

We believe the examination should be conducted by an agency. It may be a central government agency or an independent body. And the exams should be administered three or four times a year to give students the opportunity to improve their results.

 

This means that the current system will no longer be a major national issue and students will not be under unbelievable pressure knowing that their future hangs on the results of this [single] three-hour exam. They should know that if they don’t do well the first time around, they will be able to sit the exam again in three months. Psychologically speaking, they will be calmer and better prepared.

 

It’s currently an inhuman and unfair system, which really doesn’t reward the best students. In most cases it rewards the students with the best memorisation skills.

 

We also want students’ achievements at the secondary school to be taken into consideration when applying for university. If this is the case, students will redirect their interest to the school. The frondistirio will cease to be their top concern.

 

We also have to look at the technical secondary schools. We need to upgrade these schools in such a way so that graduates can attain certification and find employment. If this happens, we believe that a large number of students will choose to go to technical schools and alleviate the bottleneck at theoretical universities. This is the case in other countries like Germany and the United Kingdom.

 

 

 

Teachers should be able to assign students group projects and have them use libraries and computers. This means students will have to conduct research, discuss and present their findings. They will begin to cultivate knowledge and not be passive receivers of knowledge.

 

This will bring students closer to the school and will make students love school. This cannot be achieved if you are clinging to one book, which you must learn by heart. We need more books and these have to be available to the students. The issue at hand is not to be able to select one of four books, but to have all four books. And because this is costly, the books may be on a disc [eBooks].

 

We also believe that books should not be the only source of information. Students should learn to search on the internet. If you are learning about the French Revolution, for example, you should be able to go online where you will find many things that you cannot find in any book. You will find different views.

 

But we also need libraries. Students should be encouraged to check out books from the library to learn about what others have said about a particular topic.

 

Certainly, all this requires a different kind of school environment in which students have the time to work in the library. It means the school day should be extended so that students can participate in [extracurricular activities] like drama or music or painting.

 

Another issue involves the continuous training of educators and the need to provide them with incentives to work harder. This includes financial incentives.

 

 

 

Yes, we need money because if we want libraries and computers we have to pay for them. But this will not be difficult because it will be gradual and the money will be found gradually. I do not believe that the obstacle will be finding the money.

 

 

This has to be decided by the minister. What we say, as the architects of education reform, is that this cannot happen from one day to the next.

 

You have to implement changes, in a pilot phase, in several schools for about one or two years and assess the results so that you can make any necessary changes.
It is very important to create pilot programmes at all levels. I do not believe that we should start, for instance, at the primary school and then wait several years to decide what to do with the secondary school.

 

 

 

SCHOOL reform is long overdue, but educators can’t agree on how to fix the broken public education system that almost everyone agrees is failing students.

 

A new package of proposals, tabled by the government’s national committee on secondary school education last week, has rekindled the long-running debate on how to better prepare Greece’s system.

 

Educators see the good, bad and ugly in the proposals made by Yiorgos Babiniotis, who headed the effort (see main story).

 

“We’re still studying the proposals, but in general we can say that we agree with Babiniotis on the need to disassociate the secondary school from the university entrance exam system so as to eradicate the teaching-to-the-test reputation of schools,” said Dimitris Peppe, president of the Federation of Secondary School Teachers (OLME). “But we also want the government to scrap the 50-percent standard [which was not proposed] because it is forcing students to turn to private universities.”

 

 

The minimum standard was established by the former government because, under previous rules, even those who failed the exam miserably were still eligible for a university education.  According to Kostas Therianos, a middle-school teacher who has conducted numerous studies on education in Greece, the proposals “will not contribute to a significant change in the secondary school system”. 

 

If the government adopts the proposals, Therianos added, it “will risk transforming the school into a testing centre”.

 

Though he agrees with Babiniotis that there should be a complete separation of the university exam from secondary school, he also believes no test score or grade earned by students should be counted when applying for university. Instead, admission should be determined entirely by a single entrance exam.
Regardless, most parents agree change is needed.

 

 

“Of course something must be done,” said Maria Pehlivanoglou, a retired teacher and president of the parent’s association at a secondary school in the northern Athens suburb of Nea Erythrea. “It’s an issue that we discuss at our meetings. The secondary school is becoming more and more of a prep school for the university exam, which means there’s no time left for any real learning. And, hopefully, this will spell the end of private tutoring. It would be great if children could do all their learning in school.”

 

The proposal to extend the current school day appears to be welcomed by most parents, who often complain their children are being assigned too much homework.

 

“This sounds like a good idea,” said Pehlivanoglou, whose son is in his final year of secondary school. “But only under the right conditions. It just shouldn’t be a way to keep children at school longer without any real purpose other than to babysit them.”
 

1964
New law extends basic mandatory education to nine years (from six).
Primary school becomes six years, middle school and secondary school
 three years each

 

1982
New tertiary education law governing the organisation and operation of state universities is passed, officially establishing academic asylum

1986
National dialogue on public school education is launched by the then education minister, Antonis Tritsis. One year later, he announces that mandatory lessons in Ancient Greek would be reintroduced into the middle school

 

 

1995
Creation of National Education
Council (ESYP), an advisory body for the education ministry. Although the council was initially dormant, it has in recent years been tasked to create policy proposals for every level of education in Greece

 

2005
Creation of the Hellenic Quality Assurance Agency for higher education (state universities and colleges). Internal and external assessment of universities and technical colleges has never
been conducted

 

2008    
New tertiary education law is passed. The highly controversial law changes
the academic asylum rules and puts an end to the so-called eternal student phenomenon

ATHENS NEWS 30/08/2010, page: 10-11