Lower Pay, Higher Rent: The Life of a Greek Supply Teacher
Source: Balkan Insight
Over the summer, the Greek education ministry hired 10,000 new teachers on a permanent basis.
In the last five years, a total of 37,500 permanent teachers have been appointed, including the 10,000.
Unions, however, say thousands more are needed.
“This is the reality we want to change,” Deputy Education Minister Zeta Makri told the Athens Macedonia News Agency in September.
Nektarios Kordis, a member of the board of directors of the Greek Federation of State Secondary School Teachers, OLME, said that in 2023, 50,000 supply teachers were hired on a temporary basis and 4,500 teachers were appointed on a permanent basis.
This year, in the first recruitment round in September, 14,500 supply teachers were hired and 10,000 were appointed to permanent posts. That’s a difference of roughly 30,000 teachers.
“This means that schools will open with a lot of problems,” Kordis told BIRN. The ministry can still hire new staff later in the school year.
The Union of State Secondary School Teachers of Xanthi, Western Thrace, said the education ministry had hired too few supply teachers.
“The vacancy coverage rate moved from low levels to unacceptably low levels in some specialties,” the union said in a statement on September 4, citing figures showing that only 17 per cent of English teacher vacancies were covered and half of philology vacancies.
Sofia said it is hard to be hired as a philologist. “It’s tiring,” she said, “waiting for work without being 100 per cent sure that you will find it”.
Katerina, a 42-year-old German teacher, said she would be lucky to get two hours teaching fifth grade primary school and two hours teaching the sixth grade.
“So I don’t have a full-time job at a school and nor can I work at only one school,” she said. This year, Katerina will work in a school in a suburb of Piraeus as well as on the island of Salamina, both a considerable distance from her home in Athens.
Teachers are hired in Greece on the basis of points accumulated according to experience and academic qualifications.
Salaries down, rents up
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
