The Extent of Late Hiring in Special Education: A Report on the Greek Institution of Parallel Support

ABSTRACT

Teacher hiring is often a dysfunctional time-consuming bureaucratic procedure, which is not always completed on time due to organisational impediments, budget cuts and slow-moving political processes. Specifically, late hiring has been reported to affect negatively teachers’ as well as students’ performance. This study examined the extent of late hiring in parallel support, which is a Greek institution aiming to support students with disabilities and special education needs within the mainstream classroom. Actually, this paper examined the number of parallel support teachers in Greek primary and secondary education who were hired on time as well as the percentage of recruitment per hiring phase during the school years 2018–2019 and 2019–2020. Results indicated high percentages of late hiring in this institution for both educational levels lead to the suggestion that the Greek State virtually divided the students into two categories; the ‘privileged’ who were supported from the start and the ‘non-privileged’ who were belatedly supported. The researchers conclude that policies in Greece concerning hiring of parallel support teachers need fundamental changes in organisation and funding, in order to serve the students’ needs and signalise a strike against ableism.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher hiring
• late hiring
• parallel support
• special education
• special education needs
• disability
• inclusion
• educational policy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Special educational needs and/or disability’ (SEND) is the official term used in Greek legislative and policy documents. Thus, we adopted this term in all cases.

2. Since (Law 4186, 2013) was enacted, parents have the ‘right’ to hire a person of their preference to support their child within the mainstream classroom. There are no qualification standards specified for those hired as special assistants.

3. National Strategic Reference Framework programmes are investment packages/resources with prefixed duration that are mostly financed from the European Structural and Investment Funds of the European Union (usually with 90%), while the rest percentage derives from State financial resources, and aim to heal the financial and social wounds from the crisis that Greece goes through since 2010 (Greek Ministry of Development and Investments, n.d.).