Next week, in twenty Greek high schools, teachers will sit on the other side of the desk. For hours they will not have a class of teenagers in front of them, but a specialised version of ChatGPT, designed for educational institutions and introduced by a new agreement between the centre-right government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and OpenAI.
It is the first concrete step in an experiment that can change the way teaching and learning is done in the country, and which many observers see as a test for the whole of Europe. For the executive it is “a new, great, exciting opportunity for the country”. For some students and teachers, however, it is the beginning of a phase in which thinking will no longer be done by people, but by algorithms.
“OpenAI for Greece”
On 5 September, the Memorandum of Understanding ‘OpenAI for Greece’ was signed at the Hellenic Expo: on the one hand Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the relevant ministers, and on the other OpenAI, supported by the Onassis Foundation and Endeavor Greece. The stated aim is to bring high-quality artificial intelligence (AI) tools into secondary schools and accelerate innovation in the Greek startup ecosystem. On the educational front, the heart of the partnership is “ChatGPT Edu”, a chatbot variant designed for schools and universities that offers access to the latest models, designed to be GDPR-compliant, running in a closed environment without advertisements, and able to enable centralised account management per institution and different roles for teachers and students. The Onassis Foundation is coordinating the implementation together with local partner “The Tipping Point in Education”, while OpenAI is co-designing the training, providing technical support and sharing “best practices” for secure classroom use.
The “Greek AI Accelerator Program”, an accelerator programme dedicated to Greek start-ups developing AI-based solutions, with access to technology credits, mentoring by OpenAI engineers and international visibility, has been launched. The ambition is to make Greece a technology hub capable of retaining the STEM graduates who all too often emigrate today and transform the country into a player in the so-called ‘Intelligence Age’.
“AI in Schools”: what really happens in the twenty pilot schools
The agreement is translated on the ground in the ‘AI in Schools’ programme, the pilot project that begins with the training of staff in 20 schools distributed throughout the territory, selected to represent different social and geographical contexts.These are mostly model and experimental high schools, to which are added six Onassis public schools, recently opened as a showcase of a public school ‘strengthened’ by private partnerships. The multi-stage timetable is structured as follows: 1) Between October and November 2025: intensive teacher training to learn about “ChatGPT Edu”, understand its functions and learn how to integrate it into both teaching and administrative activities; 2) December 2025 to February 2026:first phase of “controlled” use by teachers, who begin to employ AI to prepare lessons, assessment materials, and exercises differentiated by level, as well as to lighten paperwork; 3) March to June 2026: starting specific training on how to get students to use “ChatGPT Edu”-initially the older ones-for research, projects, creative activities, and foreign language study, always under teacher supervision; 4) in the 2026-27 school year: Completion, with parallel use by teachers and students in schools that will have passed the first three phases with success.