The Ministry of Education is sending two bills to the Legal Service for legal technical control for the evaluation of educational work and teachers in Primary and Secondary Education.
As announced by the Minister of Education, Sports and Youth Prodromos Prodromou, “it is time to have a more modern and more reliable evaluation system”.
Specifically, Mr. Prodromou regarding the Evaluation of Teachers and the Educational Project stated: “Two bills have been prepared and are being sent to the Legal Service for legal processing for the evaluation of the Educational Project and Teachers, in Secondary and Primary Education respectively. After decades and after the necessary preparations and consultations have been carried out for almost three years now, we have come to evaluation plans for both levels of education”.
Then the Minister of the Interior noted that “for this purpose, previous drafts and proposals that have existed in the Ministry for decades were used, but mainly the project was based on the draft drawn up by a special committee, under the chairmanship of Professor Mr. Costas Christos. Through the dialogue and consultations held with educational organizations, opinions have been heard and suggestions have been submitted, some of which have even been incorporated into the proposal.
It is absolutely necessary to have a modern, functional and more reliable evaluation system. . It is also our obligation towards the European Commission.
The objectives that can be achieved with this Evaluation Plan are as follows:
- Our education should have a coherent and meritorious evaluation system that will promote effort, encourage improvement-training and establish the right incentives for teachers, both individually and at the level of school units. To have a system that essentially promotes meritocracy and not just formally. That is, the judgments and careers of teachers depend on the value and effort they put in, as well as on their performance and will not be limited mainly to ancient times, as has often been the case until today.
- To exist organized and systematic planning of the Ministry for the formative assessment and the continuous training/awareness of the teachers where necessary.
- Greater emphasis should also be placed on the collective evaluation, on the evaluation of the educational work and ultimately of each school itself. In other words, the education system should be more responsive to the need for accountability to the community.
- There should be, through evaluation, continuous feedback from the Ministry on the activities, programs and methodology in schools and a basis on which to are supported and the necessary adjustments will be planned.
The proposed plan foresees a series of innovations, the main ones of which are:
- Evaluation that will be done on the basis of specific fields and tasks, with criteria that are described precisely and transparently and are measurable as much as possible.
- In addition to the inspections, the corresponding school management also participates in the evaluation with a more active role. In other words, principals are also defined as evaluators, since they have daily supervision and contact with the teachers and a sufficient picture of their activity in the classroom and in the school. The two evaluators, inspector and manager, will evaluate separately and then an average will be weighted, with the evaluation of the inspection having a weight of two thirds and that of the management one third.
- The scale evaluation is upgraded and will be from 1 to 100. In this way, the possibility of a more accurate numerical evaluation is given and a greater possibility of discrimination for the evaluators. There will be a separate score for all the prescribed fields and criteria on a scale of up to 100 points.
- A secondary evaluation process is foreseen for any objections and this is completely distinguished from the primary evaluation to ensure better conditions of objectivity.
- The evaluation process and possible recommendations will be linked to the improvement training program established at the Pedagogical Institute educational actions and programs.
For the implementation of the new system, the necessary transition period of two years is foreseen”.
