Greece Announces National Plan to Curb Violence in Schools

The Greek government said it will toughen up punishments as part of its plan to tackle increasing violence within educational establishments and bullying among pupils, as well as banning mobile phones in schools.

The Greek government on Tuesday presented a national plan to deal with the problem of violence among schoolchildren, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said is “on the rise”.

Punishments will be toughened up and among the interventions that the national plan envisages is a digital complaint platform for bullying incidents in schools.

“The phenomenon of violence also existed in my times, then it was more or less acceptable and we were not troubled by the trauma it would leave for children. The phenomenon today is on the rise and intense… the violence is about a non-acceptance of diversity, it’s an intolerance to difference,” Mitsotakis said while announcing the plan in Thessaloniki alongside Education Ministry officials.

Students and parents will be able to submit reports about bullying incidents to the new complaint platform.

The school will first assess the incident and, if it is identified as very serious, a four-member committee consisting of a psychologist, a social worker and two teachers will deal with it.

Mitsotakis said the new platform will allow the authorities to “learn about an incident and intervene”.

“I want to ask everyone to break the silence; it’s not only about the victims, but also about the witnesses,” he urged.

Under the plan, school authorities will be able to suspend pupils for a five-day period. Previously the most severe penalty was a two-day suspension.

Parents of students who have caused any damage to school property will have to cover the cost of repairs.

Pupils will be allowed 75 days of justified absences and 40 days of unjustified absences before being forced to repeat the entire year.

The school attendance book, textbooks and students’ grades will be digitalised so parents will be able to receive more information about their children’s attendance and education.

Another measure envisaged by the plan is a ban on the use of mobile phones in schools. Students who use their phones to videotape classmates and post footage on social media will be forced to change schools.

BIRN’s cross-border investigation, ‘Teachers, Parents Must Adapt to Address Peer Violence in Balkans’, published in November 2023, found that violence in schools is widespread.

The survey, conducted in ten Balkan countries, found that out of a total of 34 parents, 19 said their child or children had suffered from violence at school. The vast majority experienced physical violence, sometimes accompanied by other forms of violence.

A total of 84.2 per cent of parents surveyed said their children were exposed to physical violence, alone or as part of a ‘package’ with other types of violence. A total of 89.5 per cent said the perpetrators of the violence were classmates of their child or children. Some 59 per cent of parents whose children experienced violence said no measures were taken to protect them.

While all teachers surveyed said they know how to recognise violence at school, some 29.4 per cent do not see, for example, lifting a girl’s skirt, pinching girls, grabbing girls, or pulling girls’ hair as violence.