The Minister of Education, Sports and Youth, Mr Prodromos Prodromou, participated today in a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Education and Culture, which discussed the amendment of the Regulations concerning the operation of Public Secondary Education Schools. Prodromou made the following statement to the media. The evaluation procedures will be completed with the proposal for the Evaluation of Educational Work and the Evaluation of Teachers which has been completed and the relevant bills have been submitted to the Legal Service for processing.
As part of these processes of a comprehensive and reliable evaluation, data and information resulting from three years of implementation of the new evaluation system in the high school cycle are already being used. The examination of the data reveals the need for some improvement measures. A first measure is that of abolishing stagnation on the basis of performance, while other measures relating to the better orientation and distribution of pupils in the various branches of the upper secondary school and technical schools should follow, in order to achieve the most beneficial attendance of children.
It is proposed to abolish stagnation due to performance in the Gymnasium because any pedagogical benefit seems, from the available data, to be almost negligible, while the process of stagnation creates great psychological pressure and stress, and sometimes even tendencies to drop out of school in a small number of children. Moreover, this proposal takes into account the fact that attendance up to the age of 15 is compulsory. As an example, in the last three years in which it was applied (before the pandemic) it concerned a percentage of 0.5% of pupils. Whereas, the overall administrative costs as well as the loss of teaching time for all high schools due to the procedures involved, amounting to at least ten working days or a period of about two weeks, is disproportionate.
Note that by adopting this change, the time gained can be used to better adapt and more comfortably conduct school work within the given time series of the year, for repetitions, and also to make time available for Skills Workshops planned by the school. In particular, these workshops will more systematically cultivate the 21st century skills that are also envisaged in the plans at the level of the European Strategy for 2030. It will also be possible to include a number of thematic modules for which there is always unanimous agreement that they are necessary but for which there is generally not enough time available, such as Digital Skills, Environmental Education, Financial and Economic Literacy, Sex Education, Road Safety and so on.
The proposal is complemented by a provision according to which in order for students to follow the corresponding Orientation Course Group in the first year of high school, it will be assumed that they have the necessary basic knowledge in the corresponding specialisation courses (score 10/20). This will avoid the phenomenon of some students not being able to follow the courses in the Group and then the direction they choose. In this way, students will be oriented in the school programme in a way that corresponds beneficially to their knowledge and performance.
With the implementation of the proposal, the respective actual scores will be indicated on indicative and high school diplomas and in this way there will continue to be an incentive for performance and improvement, since students will not wish to have a diploma with a score lower than the "base".
The legislative proposal establishes the elimination of stagnation due to performance, where there appears to be little pedagogical benefit to repeating the same class, but the same does not apply to stagnation due to absenteeism. Because stagnation results from such a high degree of absenteeism that in essence it means that the pupil has not actually attended classes and therefore it is not then a case of "repeating" the class, but essentially a first attendance.
We hope that subsequently and through consideration by the Parliamentary Committee these amendments will be approved which will contribute to a better organisation of classes and operation of schools, as well as a better school career for pupils.
This proposal should be supplemented
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