Insults, insults, injuries and lawsuits. These are the results of the two-day conference on “The offer of private schools in the field of education. Present and future”who planned Office of Secondary Education, Piraeus. A group of left-wing teachers felt that the Directorate of Secondary Education should not organize such an event, which was attended by representatives of private schools in Piraeus, and canceled it with shouts and insults. The issue also acquired political dimensions: SYRIZA called for resignation.

In particular, the conference was scheduled for last Friday and Saturday at Municipal Theater of Piraeus. However, the pre-election showed the climate, as after the announcement of a two-day conference, trade union activists attacked the director of education, who had the initiative. Finally, before the start of the first day of the two-day conference on Friday, a group of about 40 people violently protested the organizers by attacking them, which led to the cancellation of the event. According to a DDE Piraeus statement, “30 to 35 people invaded the theater grounds, taunting, insulting and spitting on me and the official guests.” The organizers invited the protesters to present their positions at the event. On the part of the Authority, as a counter argument, it was said that the district’s private schools were also run by the director of secondary education, for this reason a two-day seminar was planned.

ELME Piraeus spoke about the “unprecedented, unimaginable and dangerous decision of the director of secondary education Piraeus. “He defends schools where, in order for a student to study, parents have to pay a lot of money for education.” ELME stated that the relevant director of secondary education is primarily the administrative/disciplinary head of private schools/teachers. It is bound by the Constitution and the legal framework for the protection of public education.

On the other hand, the Association of Teachers of Piraeus recalled that “the establishment and operation of private schools has been the concern of the Greek state since the adoption of the Political Constitution of 1827, article 20 of which states that Greeks have the right to establish schools and choose teachers for teaching, and also that Parliament has a vigilant eye on public education in the sense that it is concerned with the provision of free compulsory education. A similar provision was contained in the “Sovereign of the Constitution” of 1832 (Article 28)”, and also that “in connection with their duties – duties, every academic year, all directors of the Enlightenment participate in meetings and private schools, as it is absolutely logical. A public school that provides higher education, for which the vast majority of teachers work methodically, has nothing to fear from private education, on the contrary, the exchange of best practices, especially in innovative actions, only improves the result of educational work. I can drive.”

On Monday, the Association of Private Schools and the Federation of Private Educators of Greece made speeches on the subject, and the event took on a political character, given the context of the pre-election period. SYRIZA MPs Nikos Filis and Ioannis Ragusis, in a report they submitted to Parliament, called on the director of secondary education Piraeus to resign immediately: “This is a shame! The political responsibility lies with the Ministry of Education and the government.”