Was anyone naïve enough to believe the education ministry would be able to introduce a new evaluation system for public school teachers? Teaching unions have been preventing the proper evaluation of their members for decades, preferring the old joke of an evaluation system by which almost all teachers, even the hopeless cases, received top marks for their work. They had used every trick and spoiling tactic they could think of to prevent a teacher’s work being accurately evaluated, but the filibustering could not have gone on forever.

Education Minister Athena Michaelidou appears determined to go ahead, even though she has been the target of vicious public attacks by the secondary teachers’ union Oelmek – the most militant of the unions – for her efforts. She had asked for the suggestions of the unions before finalising the evaluation scheme, but adopted only the few she considered useful. The ministry proposal was sent to the unions before it was due to be discussed at the House education committee and Oelmek went on the offensive, demanding the whole system is drastically changed so that all its ludicrous proposals were incorporated.

In a long announcement, Oelmek made it crystal clear that the union’s sole objective is to prevent teachers being properly evaluated. It does not want teachers to be evaluated by the head of the school ‘arithmetically’ (giving them a mark) “because we consider that this would have a negative impact in the school climate, it would intensify competition instead of cooperation at schools, and would constitute a big blow to the democratic character of the school, where the highest organ should be teaching staff associations and not the school head.”

Not only does Oelmek not want the head to evaluate teachers (without an arithmetic mark there would be no evaluation) but it also wants him/her to have no authority over teachers as the “highest organ” of the school will be the teachers! This is the most glaring stupidity in the union’s announcement which, essentially, is a long list of proposals designed to prevent any type of evaluation; for example it argues that a teacher who does not get a ‘pass’ mark in their evaluation should carry on teaching regardless. It is of no concern to Oelmek that students suffer at the hands of bad teachers.

But this is perfectly consistent with the philosophy of Oelmek – for the union, public education primarily exists so that teachers can have an easy and well-paid professional life – which has no regard for the interests of students. It also shows how out of touch with the real world teaching union bosses are. They actually believe that the union should decide – not the employer – how workers must be evaluated!

It is encouraging that the minister is not taking this nonsense, declaring last week that she would not accept proposals that “destroy the philosophy of this reform.”