SYRIZA’s seven-month reign has left the country (public) education sector in shambles, with the most prominent examples being a surge in the number of unfilled teaching spots — greater than the usual gap — an abolition of exam-entry secondary magnet schools and the slapping of a …23-percent VAT rate on the education sector!

The chief “architect” of SYRIZA’s education policy was former minister Aristidis Baltas, a far-left university professor known for his Marxist-inspired concepts of education.

Just as troubling is the fact that 25,882 children could not be absorbed public daycare centers, as applications for those children — usually wage-earners and taxpayers — were rejected.

One “achievement” by the radical leftist government and Baltas — himself a 1950s graduate of Greece’s most prestigious (private and American-rooted) preparatory school — was the fact that the deadline for applications by alternate teachers, a now customary “stop-gap” measure to fill teaching vacancies, ended on the day the school year began, Friday Sept. 11…

Given that applications by alternate teaching candidate number a mere … 130,000, and along with the period given for appeals, some pupils greet their new teachers with a “Merry Christmas”.