The admission examinations for universities and colleges start tomorrow. This will be an endurance test for all students, because the examinations will continue longer than before – two months and a half!

The students who will enter and exit the examination halls for two and a half months are 128 000. The testing period will have a four day break at the beginning of June, when the schools will be given for use to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which will prepare them for the Euro elections.

The candidates for the Technical Schools are about 3000 and they will fight for 2366 positions in the colleges and sergeant schools. The big student wave will begin on May 15th, because this is when the high school admission examinations start – 91 320 candidates will fight for 69 586 spots.

One of the most important sessions of the primary and secondary education council, whose chairman is Prof. Georgios Babiniyotis, will take place before the beginning of the examinations. The programs of the high schools will be discussed on this session and when they are ready, the admission commissions will decide on the new books.

The Minister of Education Aris Spiliotopoulos announced that the new books will be “lighter and easier to read” and the students will no longer crouch under their weight. The last rewritten books were distributed three years ago, they caused many political disputes and they even cost one parliament member seat – the one of the former Minister of Education Marietta Yanakou.

“In order to improve the condition of the education system, we need to act fast and without postponing,” said Minister Spiliotopoulos. The Pedagogic Institute has been going through and evaluating the school books. At the same time, a plan is on the run to develop educational programs for teacher, which will teach them how to work with new technologies.