The Greek education system has been consistently further
developed over the past ten years. General compulsory schooling lasts nine
years and more than 90 per cent of each age group moves on to the upper
secondary level. Reforms to secondary education launched in 1997 resulted
in changes to the main university entrance examination from the year 2000.
Now a larger number of subjects is examined, not just four as was
previously the norm. The main foreign language taught is English, both in
state and in private schools. In 1992 a compulsory second foreign language
was introduced, a reform that also benefited German. In the school year
2001/2002, German was taught as a second foreign language to more than
100,000 pupils at 693 schools out of a total of 1,948 grammar schools
(secondary level I) and 1,296 lycιes (secondary level II). In comparison
with the over 2,000 French teachers in the country (French was long the
first foreign language to be taught) there are now over 600 German
teachers, and the number is growing.
At present only a fraction of school leavers who want to do so (some
140,000 per annum) are able to go to university, due to a shortage of
student places. Although in the past ten years the universities in Athens
and Thessaloniki have been joined by newly-founded universities in the
provinces (including on the islands), the 18 universities still cannot
provide enough places, in spite of the decreed increase in student numbers
in all faculties. In 2003/04 there will again only be 80,000 places
availa
ble for first-year students, as in the year before. This shortfall
means that large numbers of Greek students choose to study abroad,
especially in Britain (over 28,000), France, the US, Italy (approx. 7,000)
and Germany (in 1997/98, of approx. 8,000 Greek students in the country,
some 3,700 had taken the "Abitur", the German university entrance exam).
Private Greek institutions, too, have benefited for years from this
situation. They cooperate with foreign universities to offer basic and
further study courses in many subjects for a reported 30,000 students,
although these are not recognized in Greece. The open university in Patras
began offering courses in 1998 and now has about 6,000 students. Many
universities now offer "free courses" which can be job-related. In 1992
Greece began developing a vocational education system on the German model.
