CoE Ruling: Excluding Private Sector Experience in Teacher Recruitment Deemed Unconstitutional

Contrary to the constitutional principles of equality and meritocracy is a provision of law that does not count teachers’ prior experience in private education in the process of grading them for employment in public schools. This was ruled in decisions (1251-1254/2024) by the Plenum of the Supreme Council of State (State Council of State) and annulled two notices in the part concerning the non-counting of previous service that teachers had in the private sector.

Specifically, as stated in the decisions of the Plenary Session of the Council of State in Law no. 4589/2019, a system of recruitment of teachers in public education is provided for, with qualification grading based to a significant extent on the criterion of educational experience, which indicates the experience of the candidate. According to the CoE, the legislator set as a criterion, among others, for the selection of teachers the candidate’s experience as a substitute in public education, and only exceptionally in private education, and this is because of the contribution of teachers as substitutes to public education.

However, as the Plenary Session held, it is “in principle legitimate for the legislature to differentiate between experience gained in public education and experience gained in private education, but only as long as the experience is a selection criterion by the principles of equality and meritocracy, the total failure to give any weighting to length of service in private education, with only certain exceptions, violates the constitutional principles of equality and meritocracy and the purpose of the law to appoint the most competent and experienced to public education’.

Finally, the plenary decisions state that “while it is legitimate for the legislature to support those who have served as substitutes or hourly employees in public education and to provide for a more favorable way of calculating their service compared to that provided in the private sector, it cannot, however, completely ignore service in private education, given that the recruitment system of Law no. 4589/2019 attaches particular importance to educational experience”. It should be noted that with the above decisions of the Plenary of the Council of State, the respective lawsuits were abolished due to the challenge of the same terms of these notices.

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