The tabling of the bill in Parliament will take place around mid-2025 at best, for legislation last amended in the 1970s
September 2024, and whether, the debate will begin to modernize the way teachers are evaluated. The self-evaluation system of school units, through which teachers are also evaluated, may have been implemented in schools since last September, but changes to the outdated teacher evaluation system, which dates back to the 70s, do not seem to be to the government's immediate priorities. Next September, the Minister of Education Athina Michailidou is expected to start a dialogue with all the agencies involved, which will continue until the end of the school year. This implies that the submission of the bill to the Parliament will take place in the best of cases around the middle of 2025. It is worth noting that the bill, on which Ms. Michailidou will be consulted, was prepared when Prodromos Prodromos was at the helm of the Ministry of Education, the current minister, however, after studying it, deemed it necessary to proceed to a new round of consultations with the teachers' unions.
What does the bill provide for?
The planning for the new Teacher Evaluation System and the Educational Project is included in the Recovery and Resilience Plan, with a budget of €550,000 and a completion date of December 2027. This reform is estimated to update and upgrade the existing evaluation system of teachers and schools.
Among other things, the bill, in its current form, provides that in the evaluation of the teachers, in addition to the inspectors who participate now, the management of the school will also participate, while the teacher's final score will come from the average of the two scores. Inspector and management will give their score on a scale from 1 to 100 so that there is more possibility of accurate recording and discrimination. That is, instead of the score being up to 10 for various aspects resulting in a score out of 40, it will be up to 100 for each criterion considered.
The manager's evaluation will be based on specific criteria, some of which are professional knowledge/development, teaching/professional competence, organization, management, communication, general behavior/action.
The evaluation system will be directly linked to a program trainings which will be organized by the Pedagogical Institute. A secondary evaluation process is also foreseen for any objections and this is completely distinguished from the primary evaluation to ensure better conditions of objectivity. In addition, contract teachers will also be evaluated, who will not receive a rating.
