Cram school

Plans for a National High School Diploma in Greece, a key pledge of the New Democracy government, have faltered amid political hesitation, logistical hurdles, and fears of a public backlash.

Teachers were the profession with the highest number of hirings in Greece during 2015-23, according to a Eurobank study.

Most of the professions high on the scale of hirings are related to tourism, whose numbers, with the exception of the pandemic years, have exploded.

More than 120,000 university graduates are waiting to be appointed to teaching positions in public primary and secondary schools, and it will not happen anytime soon.

Education experts are hailing the advent of online cramming schools in Greece as an educational El Dorado, given that some are even paid up 1,200 euros from countries of the Middle East.

Two digital platforms currently operate in Greece. The company with the largest market share is GoStudent.

The new school year started this week. The youngsters are anxious but happy, while their parents are mostly frustrated. They know that the struggle related to extracurricular lessons, which range from basic skills such as foreign languages to more sophisticated knowledge, is about to start and will intensify through the last years of elementary school.

A professor who worked at the Technical College (TEI) of Serres and a suspected accomplice who owns a private cramming school in the same city in northern Greece were jailed pending trial on charges of bribery and blackmail on Friday.

A college professor and two suspected accomplices at a private cramming school have been arrested in northern Greece by the police's Internal Affairs Division for allegedly running an academic racket.

There was nothing in the latest report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) regarding Greek education that came as a surprise, that we didn't know from personal experience or has been widely debated for years on end.

The 106 students at Patra University's Department of Business Administration who were caught cheating after submitting the exact same paper are nothing but products of the Greek education system.

A bill introducing drastic reforms to all levels of education is to go to public consultation next week despite objections to its content by private schools and the parents of children attending cramming and language classes at those schools.