07-11-16  Education Minister Costas Gavroglou’s remarks upon taking office

Good afternoon,

You may realise after the speech of Nikos Filis who the minister is in this ministry. I truly mean that, because while this is an exceptionally difficult day for me politically and emotionally, I consider Nikos’ speech as a great lesson in democracy for our ministry, for education, and for our society. This is how things should be done

I will note some more mundane issues that will preoccupy us as of tomorrow, while earnestly thanking Sia Anagnostopoulou, Costas Fotakis, Theodosis Pelegrinis, and of course Costas Zouraris and Dimitris Baxevanakis, who undertook this weighty task. As Nikos Filis said, and I know since I was involved in many initiatives at the ministry, without Takis Katsaros many things would not have been accomplished. The same stands true for General Secretary Yannis Pantis and the General Secretary for Youth Pausanias Papageorgiou, with all of whom I had an impeccable cooperation

 One of our great challenges is to be able to safeguard what we did and not consider it a given. We should not believe that schools automatically opened for the first time without a glitch, with books and all the issues we have discussed. Usually the second time is more difficult, so we must not rest assured. It is absolutely clear that the emphasis on special education will continue, as will the consolidation and extension of all-day schools. These are issues related to the daily life of citizens.  

We have of course the initiatives taken in research and tertiary education. We will continue the dialogue with universities and on graduate programmes, and we shall continue the work of the departing alternate minister, with the large number of scholarships and the EU ESPA (National Strategic Reference Framework) funding.

Certainly, despite the difficulties and the reaction of individuals – whom it is very difficult for me to imagine as members of this society – we shall do everything for refugee education. For us, refugee children are neither Muslims, nor Syrians nor Iraqis, nor Christians. They are above all children. If society does not understand that then we shall do everything for it to understand. We will not budge one bit on the refugee issue.

I would also like to touch on certain other issues, one of which is exceptionally complex, with the creditors and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We are trying to annul commitments undertaken by previous governments. These are commitments that have put us in an exceptionally difficult situation, and in the last year we managed to decommit from many of these. Hence, we are on a good path, which is very complex and depends on the bigger picture.

Here we face two issues, which if they are not resolved, we will not be able to solve many issues. The one is the issue of tenured teachers’ appointments, and the other is an increase in education spending. Often, the fixation of our creditors on our getting the “green light” for these things draws us into different relations.

We are beyond the stage of pondering. I shall say something that we say and not at all as a mere formality. At this juncture, with a society ravaged at many levels but also with signs of recovery in education, we rely exclusively on educators. As many laws as we may pass, , if public and private school teachers do not shoulder the heavy burden, not only of their work but also of realising that they are conducting a social mission under new conditions, we cannot proceed very far.

In the national and social dialogue on education much has been written and said. It is well that this occurred, because a dialogue means we confront each other with our ideas, to disagree, to agree, and to exploit old ideas. We should not consider that we are the first to think of certain things, and it is crucial to see to which of these ideas the public is more receptive. If society is not receptive, even the best laws and articles cannot take us very far.

We will be taking into account the concerns of the National and Social Dialogue on Education, and the policies and social priorities of our government, and our conversations and commitments, because we must be very earnest, we have commitments to our creditors, and we have the capacity to negotiate

Thus, considering our discussions and commitments with the creditors and the OECD, we plan to move in three directions. It happens that this entails a triad – I do not know why. The first is an almost complete drafting of a three-year plan with a specific timeline. It is very important with an issue as complex as education, for society to understand the solutions in a simple manner. Otherwise, we will all be confused and no one will know what is going on.

Hence, it is of great importance for this three-year plan to include a timetable, on the basis of which we too must be evaluated. We are not above evaluation. Hence, we will publish it in a few days. It was drafted by the previous ministry leadership and we shall have much to say on this.

The second prong of the triptych is to see what we shall do with the final years of high school, with nationwide university entry exams, and the first years of university. These are three aspects of the same problem – the fact that we have lost our high schools. What sort of society is our society when it has with its choices essentially cancelled out the final two years of high school? Teachers bear no responsibility for this. When I say teachers I do not mean all of them, and I think we all understand this. It is very important for us to tackle this problem head on. Do we want a society without the last two years of high school?  Let us review this. Do we want a society in which families, relatives and friends face hardships because their child will take university entrance exams? The 18-year-old is deprived of the opportunity to fall in love, and if they are in love and things do not go well, they cannot even break up. Are these things serious? Will this not come to the surface after 10-15 years in the character of youths? As a society, do we wish to maintain and reproduce this system? If not, then we all, myself included, are confronted with extremely serious decisions that must be taken.

The third issue which we have studied with Alternate Minister Sia Anagnostopoulou and Alternate Minister Costas Fotakis is the unified sector of research and education. Imagine a triangle with universities on one leg, tertiary technical schools (TEI) on the other, and research centres on the third. The relations between them, frozen over many decades, must be redefined. Only benefits can arise from this. We say all this, stating that there will be no problem with the jobs of employees anywhere. You should know that all that we plan and all that was done by the existing leadership require that which is most difficult for a society. That is a change in mentality, and that can happen only if we speak simultaneously about the good and the ills.

Where shall we change mentality? There will be no prescriptions or laws about all that I said and all that was done. Why should a child not be sent to an all-day school? Why should they have to go and learn outside of school? Why should there not be trust in public schools? Do you want to see the statistics? This is not a front against private schools – God forbid. They have exceptional teachers and many have exceptional administrations, to be fair. The degradation and discrediting of public schools that took place, for reasons we all comprehend, has essentially taken root in our society. This is one of the many necessary changes of mentality that must take place.

When we speak of a change in mentalities, there are certain words that we are afraid to utter. Let us not fear to utter the word evaluation. Let us not fear to utter the word trade union. Does this mean that evaluation must be punitive?

As long as my colleagues and I are here there will be no such nonsensical punitive evaluations. [Evaluations aiming at] improvement, yes. We must inculcate this in our culture, because crooked and incredible things happened. We ourselves must imbue a renewed meaning in this. A society that in its totality is trade unionised, in the final analysis is not a democratic society

If there is a democratic demand, it is that we must review what all these things mean. In the multi-faceted crisis that our country and other European countries are experiencing – and we do not say this as an alibi, as we have discussed this endlessly with colleagues including Nikos Filis – we have a new opportunity to make a difference. Do you know what that is?  We must put on the table values that tend to be forgotten – that education is mainly humanistic, and secondly it is the means that forms democratic citizens, those who tomorrow will challenge the powers that be and mentalities. We must again place these issues of values on the table, and not only in Greece. We are prepared to discuss this not only with our creditors, but also with other education ministers throughout Europe, so that they too may promote these forgotten European ideals.

I want to say very few things on the issue of the Church, so as not to give the impression that I am avoiding it.  I admit that I do not know these issues as deeply as Nikos Filis, and I underline that Nikos Filis’ knowledge of both the dogmatic and historical aspects of this issue is deep.

I think that at this time we should stick to the statements made by government and the archbishop, when they left the meeting at the prime minister’s office. We should go ahead with planning the textbooks at the Institute of Educational Policy, evaluate how things went this year, train theologians, and go forth. Neither in the European framework nor in our own does it help to have an issue of bigotry, for which I must stress the education minister was not responsible. A Metropolitan bishop sent me a letter of congratulations yesterday. In it, he says he is certain that in an academically documented way, we will achieve the best result. This is a bishop who was on the textbooks committee. I hail his statement and I am certain that the archbishop accepts it as well.

I would like to end on a personal note. Many of you know that political culture is not learned, but rather arises. Degrees, doctorates and all that are the easy part. The difficult part is to acquire a system of values and a cultural foundation. In the shaping of my political culture, of a technocrat in the final analysis, many people played a role. I want to mention my great debt to Babis Drakopoulos, the head of efforts of the left with democracy and socialism, who in the black days of the junta in 1968 decided to clash with the hierarchy of the KKE (Greek Communist Party). I mention Takis Benas, the historic cadre of the left who withdrew when he knew he should have and taught us all how to age with dignity. I mention Yannis Banias, who is no longer with us, for his incredible stubbornness in the desert-like decade of 1990, when we believed that the vision of the left had been lost. Finally, I wish to mention Nikos Filis, to whom I seriously owe much. We know each other for many decades, when he was a student and I had just returned from abroad.

If I were to say something as I did about the aforementioned comrades, it would be that Nikos taught me to listen but never to obey, and for that I am grateful.