Greece’s Education System has undergone several effective changes throughout years. Its last change was in 2000, when senior high multidisciplinary schools were split into lyceums and technological vocational schools.

The Greek Educational System

School life starts early in Greece since parents are obliged to enroll their children in “Νηπιαγωγείο”, which is known as nursery school or Kindergarten, usually at the age of 3. The Greek kindergarten consists of two consequent grades, which pupils necessarily attend, in order to be promoted to primary school level.

“Δημοτικό” (Demotikon) is the elementary or primary education school, and consists of six grades. Greek pupils enter the primary school approximately at the age of six. A school year consists of three semesters and marks begin from 0 to 10.

Gymnasium (junior high school) is the first level of secondary education, and the last obligatory one. A student is needed an elementary school’s discharge paper to attend this school.

It consists of three grades, and the promotion to each sequent level requires qualification in final exams at the end of each school year, only for the primary subjects. A school year also consists of three semesters but unlike the previous education level, students are evaluated with marks from 0 to 20.

After completing 9 years of total education and receiving the medium baccalaureate, Greek students choose either to stop or continue their secondary education. In the public sector, there are 3 options: Lyceum, Technical Vocational School and Vocational Educational.

In the first grade of Lyceum, all students attend the same subjects. School exams exist like in the junior high school for the qualification to the next grade. The second grade is when students are needed to choose a separate thematic direction of subjects that corresponds to their future preference of faculty in the tertiary education, while still attending a variety of common general subjects.

In this third year, students are asked if they wish to change their previous grade direction or not. At the end of this year, national exams are held to decide the number of qualifiers to public tertiary education.

Technical Vocational Schools are very popular among students who do not want to be “overloaded” with the “heavy” subjects of the Lyceum, and wish to obtain a specialty after completing the attendance. The attendance of Technical Vocational Schools also lasts 3 years. Technical Vocational Schools include some common subjects with the Lyceum since the 1st grade.

During the 2nd grade, students are needed to choose 2 specialty correlative subjects, depending on the local school’s availability.

Vocational Educational Schools are a branch of post-junior secondary education that offer the opportunity to attend a sole cycle of subjects corresponding to a specific manual profession such as Car Engineering, Plumbing, Electrics, Refrigerant. The attendance lasts only 2 years.

School exams are needed in order to attend public university faculties. Irrespective of the direction that a student has chosen, he/she may apply for entering any type of faculty, after he/she has had his results received. All the faculties of the tertiary education are divided to 5 groups: Humanities, Sciences, Health Sciences, Economics and Military Schools.