The Ministry of Education’s proposal for the teacher appointment system is based on two main pillars and has been in the hands of teachers’ organizations as of today.
According to reports, the three teachers’ organizations will meet on Wednesday at the POED building to review the proposal, and each will then respond in writing within one week —a timeline set by the Minister of Education.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
What the proposal entails
The Ministry’s proposal focuses on improving the written examination process and regulations that will take effect on September 1, 2027, to ensure that vacant positions are filled following the abolition of the Appointment Lists.
With regard to improving the written examination, the goal is to upgrade the written examination in order to enhance the
effectiveness of the evaluation process.
Specifically, the following improvements are being promoted:
- Elimination of the baseline used for compiling the Lists of Eligible Candidates.
- Maintaining comparability with the results of previous examinations through 2033. The validity period of the scores from each subsequent exam will be six years or until 2036, whichever comes first. Starting in 2036, when the ten-year validity of the scores of those who took the 2025 civil service exams will also have been abolished, the comparability of scores will be permanently abolished.
- Revision of the method for developing examination tests (objectives, structure, format, clearly defined criteria and specifications, and difficulty levels).
- Improvement of the process for those specializations in which candidates take exams in multiple subject areas, such as the specialization in Classical Philology.
- Prepare representative sample exam papers that are immediately available to prospective teachers.
- Provide systematic and targeted training for test writers regarding their ability to develop valid and reliable exam questions.
- Strengthen test-item development procedures to make any necessary improvements, where needed, to ensure the accessibility and reliability of the exam papers (composition of the question-setting committee, selection of question writers, etc.).
- Exams to be administered every three years
As for the regulations that will take effect on September 1, 2027, their purpose, as stated by the Ministry of Public Administration and Decentralization, is to ensure an adequate workforce to meet both permanent appointment needs and emergency staffing needs (contracts and substitutions).
To achieve this objective, the plan calls for utilizing both prospective teachers listed on the Appointment Lists and teachers who already have prior experience, such as permanent teachers, contract teachers, and substitute teachers. In this way, the Ministry adds, the existing workforce is utilized effectively, taking into account both success on the written exam and prior teaching experience.
Specifically, it is proposed that, starting in 2027, lists of eligible candidates for appointment be compiled, based primarily on written examination results and prior work experience, as follows:
(1) All candidates will have the opportunity to take a written placement exam, with no set passing score. In other words, the exam will continue to be scored for the purpose of compiling the Lists of Eligible Candidates; however, the minimum passing score will be eliminated. Participants will have the option to retain their scores for one additional examination period without being required to retake the exam immediately afterward (the scores will remain valid for six years). It is understood that the score from the 2033 exam will be valid for only three years, since starting in 2036, comparability with previous exams will be eliminated. It should be noted that those already included in the existing Lists of Appointees may also participate in the ranking examination, if they so desire.
(2) Unified lists will thus be created, which will include those who take the ranking exam, as well as those already included in existing Lists of Eligible Candidates who took the previous exam, until their previously established scores expire. Upon the expiration of their scores, all teachers must retake the ranking exam in order to be included in the next List of Appointees.
(3) It should be noted that, as is currently the case, the order of priority on the Appointment List is dynamic and subject to change:
(a) The following will continue to be eligible to take the written exam:
(i) those who are not included in the Lists of Eligible Candidates and wish to be included, and
(ii) candidates who passed the written exam, but wish to take it again in order to improve their score
and, where possible, their ranking on the List of Appointees. If candidates do not improve their scores, they will retain their existing scores.
(b) The Education Service Commission will continue to implement the procedure for revising the Appointment Lists to update them, when candidates already listed on them submit additional information regarding the scoring criteria or when the order of candidates is re-ranked following the appointment or removal offrom these lists.
(c) The examination will continue to be weighted up to fifty percent (50%) for the purpose of compiling the Lists of Appointees.
(4) In accordance with current legislation, permanent teachers will continue to be employed in the public education system, provided that there is a need for them. They will be assigned to schools on a priority basis, before fixed-term appointments are offered to other teachers. Based on the available data, it is expected that all of them will continue to be employed.
(5) With the abolition of the Appointment Lists, teachers who meet specific criteria will be included in a closed registry, organized by subject area, for the purpose of addressing emergency needs (contracts and substitutions)
(a) This registry establishes clear and objective criteria for the inclusion of teachers, so as to serve the public interest. The registry will include all teachers who are employed under contract at the start of the 2027–2028 school year, teachers serving under contract during the 2026–2027 school year or who served under contract during the 2025–2026 school year, as well as those who do not fall into the aforementioned categories but who, by August 31, 2027, a cumulative total of 24 months of teaching service in public schools as substitute teachers over the past five years.
(b) This registry will include teachers who meet the above criteria from both the Appointees’ Lists and the Eligible for Appointment Lists. For the purpose of ranking teachers in the closed registry, their numbers on the existing Lists of Appointees and Eligible Candidates will be taken into account, with the first teacher selected from the Appointees List and, thereafter, alternately from both lists.
(c) Emergency needs (for contracts and substitutions) will be filled 50% from the closed registry and 50% from the Lists of Eligible Candidates. Once the closed registry is exhausted, 100% of the needs will be met exclusively through the respective List of Appointees.
(d) The closed registry is an emergency mechanism and will remain in effect until it is exhausted. Teachers will be removed from the register (i) when they are offered a contract or a substitution assignment lasting longer than three months and they reject it, or (ii) when they become permanent employees, or (iii) when they are offered a permanent appointment on a probationary basis. Provided that, as is currently the case, a teacher who has received three consecutive annual contracts in the same subject area becomes a teacher with an indefinite-term contract.
(6) Teachers with indefinite-term contracts and contract teachers may be appointed to permanent positions only through the Appointment Lists. According to relevant case law, it is not lawful for them to be automatically granted permanent status. However, these two groups of teachers will gain an additional competitive advantage under the proposed regulations (see 1 above), since the recognition and crediting of their prior teaching experience will strengthen their position in
the ranking process and increase their chances of permanent appointment in the public education system.
