The leadership of the Ministry of Education and educational federations will again become opponents in court. Ministry Recently, Education filed a lawsuit against IOE and OLME for resuming the strike during Hellenic PISA exams, a competition organized according to the standards of the OECD competition of the same name. IOC President Mr. Thanasis Kikinis speaks to “K” about non-compliance with procedures.

In particular, as announced by the Ministry of Education, this year the Minister of Education, Mr. Niki Kerameos, has once again filed an urgent claim in the Single Court of First Instance of Athens against the Hellenic Federation of Teachers (IOE) and the Federation of Secondary Education Workers (OLME) again asks to declare it illegal, and the newly announced strike is offensive – the abstention from diagnostic examinations for students of the 6th grade of elementary schools and 3rd grade of secondary schools in matters of a broader, general knowledge of the cognitive subjects of the Modern Greek language and mathematics – “Greek PISA”.

The exams are scheduled to be held on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, in 600 schools, which were selected as a representative sample of all schools in the country by educational level. The examinations will again be in Modern Greek and Mathematics subjects and will be conducted on a representative sample of at least 6,000 students on an anonymous basis from at least 600 participating school units.

The lawsuit will be heard today, Monday, due to urgency and scheduled to be heard on Wednesday, October 5th. The ministry reminds that with the number. 537/2022 the judgment of the Single Court of First Instance of Athens, a similar action by the Ministry of Education against the IOE and OLME, which concerned the respective examinations of the previous academic year, was accepted in terms of all its requests and the corresponding strike mobilization was declared illegal and unlawful.

“The question that has been raised for two years, during which this tool is used as part of the evaluation of the education system, concerns the implementation of a law not passed by the Greek Parliament (Law 4823/2021), which the union leaders they arbitrarily try to abolish in practice, constantly denying any attempts to improve the quality of education. It is worth noting that the “Greek PISA” is aimed at drawing conclusions about the progress of the implementation of educational programs and the degree of achievement of the expected learning outcomes, in order to reliably and reliably take into account the knowledge, skills and abilities of students. skills. After studying and evaluating these findings, educational policy can be purposefully built, improving the learning process as a whole. Thus, students can become victims of this strike mobilization, which is why the ministry went to court so that our children can have access to a better education, which, when developed, will take into account measurable, objective evidence, ”the ministry emphasizes.

For their part, the ILO and OLME believe that the “Greek PISA” does not contribute to the improvement of the education system. They also refute the argument that PISA results will help improve new curricula if they are already in place. At the same time, Mr. Thanasis Kikinis, in an interview with K, also raised the issue of procedure. In particular, he stated: “The lawsuit was filed by the Ministry of Education at 10.06 this morning, it was handed to us at 11.05. and will be heard at 13:30. Apart from the debate on the merits, what is important for us to emphasize is that we have scientifically proven that not only is this beneficial, there is a huge issue of democratic procedures, with the haste of litigation. Within two hours, both us and the legal adviser are called. We don’t know if we can. There is an absolute lack of respect for ethics and democratic processes, which is very characteristic of totalitarian regimes.”