Give Us An Equal Chance

A little bit about school...

As it started  

When we moved I had to say the biggest change I noticed from being in the UK to being in Greece was school. I was in the UK from ages 4-7 and that meant I also went to the first and second grade of primary. So I was going to continue school from the second grade here. 

My first thoughts on my school I was in were:

1. how am I going to make friends since I'm not very good yet at the language? 
2. Are we going to do theatre and dress up, have lunch and do PE here as well?
3. Wheres the rest of the school?

As a 7-year-old these were my first questions since I lived in the UK and wanted it to be the same here. My parents did tell me that it was going to be different but I wasn't expecting it to be THAT much different.

Fast forward 8 and a bit years, im in the first grade of Highschool. I started noticing the problems we have in education as I finished my first year of middle-school. 

No1 The schools' appearance.

To begin with, schools look poor and unclean. The first view of the middle school and high school is okay, you can tell its spacious and has quite a lot of room for us to hang about in the breaks. If you pay attention though, the entrance of the school has a metal drain in between the road and pavement with is falling apart and is dangerous as it gets terribly slippery and once a student slipped and got her leg jammed in between the railings. These hazards are there because Greece cant fund schools with enough money to get these mended leading to accidents...

Now, for the interior of the school. Our schools, in general, aren't that big. We have two floors. On the first floor, we have a small canteen, no seating just the small built-in kiosk, the teacher's lounge, an assembly room which is supposedly a gym with a few ancient weight and a high bar, a room with a projector and a lab. There are 8 classrooms on the second floor each class is identical having desks and chairs, a whiteboard, and a bookshelf. Nothing else. The windows don't open apart from one, and the heating isn't enough. The reason I am mentioning the school as a building first is that it's not funded enough as I said above, plus greek schools don't have the same aesthetic as other countries leading itself to be like this.

No2. We have to fight to get teachers  

The system its self, on the other hand, is ridiculous. Greece has had so many elections changing the ministers of education over 3 times in the past 2 years leading to drastic changes continuously. 

The first MEGA problem we as a village have had for the past 4 years is the fact that teachers aren't assigned to our school at the beginning of the school year! At the start of our first semester, we arrived at school only to find around 7 teachers out of the 15 that we as a school are meant to have. This was ridiculous and not the first time it had happened. By the end of October, we didn't have enough linguistics teachers, we didn't have a physics teacher at all, no music nor art nor enough math teachers. That's when we decided to protest and speak up since we weren't seeing any change. We locked the school down and made it into the news that was the only way to be heard. After all of that, a week after in the beginning of November we had all our teachers apart from music and art, at our school. This is because teachers work on a point system. this means that they have to collect points in order to become a stable teacher somewhere they desire and have to travel around Greece to collect them. Our school for whatever reason gave very small amounts of points to teachers. Choosing a school isn't obligatory and they can easily pass the school down. When teachers are forced to come that results in them not giving us the care and attention, they look at us like numbers and don't care if we get a proper education or not. I have a teacher who told us that she doesn't care about us since she's leaving next year and isn't bothered if we don't pass class... making it sound like it is our fault.This does not apply to all of them.

No3. Too much presure from a young age.

Another problem we have with the system is that we have so much syllabus to get through until the end of the year in order to sit our exams, making us and the teachers stressed about finishing it until the end of the year. We only have 6 hours of school a day. We have 7 subjects in less than 6 hours making the lesson hours short and demanding. We don't have "time to breath" let alone learn so many things and have so much homework since we don't have enough hours of school. 

All of this makes students stressed and anxious as the short hours of school we have aren't sufficient and we are made to go to private lessons after school in order to learn properly. This means parents have to pay a lot of money, Not giving the more unwealthy students the right to a better education. this mostly occurs in the 3rd gade of high school just before sitting the Finals.

No4. Comparing Students and setting aside students with disabilities.

I would also like to address that fact that from an early age students get compared to each other and this continues until the end of their schooling years. The Finals they take are essentially a competition... Students from all over Greece "compete" to get the highest grades in Greece in order to get into their first University option. Moreover, the grading system is based on intelligence and not on hard work. Sure, the students who achieve the most work very hard but there are also students who work just as hard or harder but don't get rewarded for their efforts because they may not excel in exams. Also, students with learning disabilities are often pushed aside because other than dyslexia, learning disabilities aren't recognized as much as they should be.

No5 Not being able to keep up with the system.

In Greece from the beginning of middle school until the end of high school, you are obliged to take exams at the end of the year. Basically, all of the school year is built upon passing those exams on every single subject apart from P.E. Until last year, when the system changed making it only 4 exams in middle school. This was better I believe since we got more lessons in until summer break and the subjects were the more important ones. This year though im sitting normal ones which means about 15 at the end of the year because they didn't apply it to high school... who knows though, they might decide to change it again.

 MAKE YOUR MINDS UP WE ARENT EXPERIMENTS  THIS IS OUR EDUCATION NOT A GAME

  In the 3rd grade of high school, you have to set these national exams in order to get into a good school. These exams will either make or break you. What I can't stand though is that basically your whole school life is based on these exams. Everything we have to learn is because of these and they are given so much attention and give students so much stress. Incredible amounts of stress. As you don't have a choice... you either sit these exams or don't get into a decent university.It all comes down to money, if you don't have enough money to pay for private lessons, you won't progress.

No6. No help, No career guidance.

Also, I want to add, Greek schools do not provide you with any kind of help or career guidance with regards to your future. Im not aware if others schools around help, but ours doesn't and that's why im stressing the matter. We are meant o choose our directions and most of us don't have a clue. The school doesn't give you any help and you have to go to a specific type of school if you want to specialize in something. We have students in the school who want to become architects but can't because we don't have an art teacher. These students are then forced to go to another school miles away or again, pay for lessons... 

Schools are meant to be a friendly place that helps you but teachers can only help you so much since they are blocked by the system and student are left to figure it out by themselves.It's unacceptable. Why does our school not get the privileges of other schools? because we are too far away? because we suffer from a problem that has brought us down? We are children and we deserve a future, the same way as others. We should be made to go to another school hours away from home because the one in your district cant help you...

This blog is targeted at the school system and not to the teachers because most of them are always by our side and they are in as much distress as we are. It's not usually their fault they aren't assigned or that our school has a few problems. We have some great teachers who have helped us and are there for us.

Apart from all the negativity, especially middle school has allowed me to travel and be apart of things that without the help of the teachers I couldn't have done. Its a part of 2 Erasmus programmes which gave me unforgettable experiences, Its a part of a national Children's Olympic games representing the Aegean and has students who won prizes in math competitions and more. Also, we have a projector in each classroom, most of them don't work but it is a modernized approach to teaching since everything else is oldfashioned. 

There are a few more matters that I can stress but these are the most pressing ones in my opinion.

Thank you for reading my blog. 

Tina x