The obsessions of ministers and party officers at SYRIZA are permanent and universal. Public education may have its problems, every now and again plans and changes are announced, but the Education Minister’s top priority is to bring private education to the level of public education. Instead of focusing on the 95% of students who are struggling in public schools, he wants to bring order, or rather adapt private schools to SYRIZA’s standards, where 5% to 6% of children go, at the choice of their parents.

“We want excellent schools everywhere and not just schools for excellent students” the Minister underlined in Parliament, repeating SYRIZA’s obsessions because “invoking excellence has lead to the exacerbation of education inequalities”… Instead of focusing on the true inequalities in public education, the major teaching staff shortages, as well as infrastructure, his problem is the inequalities between teachers in the private and public sectors.

Obviously there are also problems in private schools, obviously teachers are treated differently, but it must not and cannot be the Education Minister’s top priority. SYRIZA is obsessed with everything that is not under the complete control of the State, everything that is related to private enterprise. When even the Prime Minister chooses to send his children to a private school, because he obviously does not trust the public schools, Mr. Filis wants to change the private schools and adapt them to the standards of public schools.

And all this is going on a when a major change in the education process in public education is being announced, with the abolition of nationwide exams and a model based on the International Baccalaureate, upon which many private schools based their operation.

His problem is excellence and not the leveling, cronyism, indifference that are major scourges in education these days. Instead of looking into upgrading public schools, which affects the vast majority of society, he chooses to focus on impressions and populism. Consequently he will neither reform private education, nor will he manage to update pubic schools, or at lease restrict the major problems and inequalities.

TO VIMA