Greece’s top state legal advisory body has ruled that children under the age of six cannot legally attend private foreign language schools, closing the door on efforts by operators to expand English-language teaching to preschoolers outside the public education system.
In a new legal opinion, the State Legal Council (NSK) concluded that enrolment of preschool-age children — including those attending pre-kindergarten and kindergarten — in the country’s private Foreign Language Centers is unlawful, despite recent reforms that introduced English activities into public nurseries.
The decision settles a growing dispute triggered by a private language school owner on the island of Crete, who sought permission to offer English lessons to children younger than six. The operator argued that Greece’s education framework had fundamentally changed after the government introduced English-language activities in public kindergartens under a 2020 education reform.
The case ultimately reached the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports and was referred to the NSK after local education authorities requested clarification over whether the public initiative could also apply to the private sector.
The legal opinion rejects that interpretation.
At the centre of the ruling is Greece’s highly regulated private language education sector, a sprawling network of after-school institutes known as Kentra Xenon Glosson (Foreign Language Centers), where children traditionally begin learning foreign languages — particularly English — from primary school age.
According to the NSK, these institutions were originally established under legislation dating back to 1940 as supplementary education providers intended to reinforce knowledge linked to primary, secondary and higher education curricula. The framework never envisaged foreign language instruction for preschool children.
The council acknowledged that Greece made an exception in 2020 when it introduced English exposure programmes in public kindergartens, part of a broader push to modernise early childhood education. But it stressed that the initiative was never designed as formal language teaching.
Instead, the programme was conceived as a play-based pedagogical activity embedded within the kindergarten curriculum, adapted to young children’s developmental needs and delivered jointly by English-language teachers and kindergarten educators.
The advisory body argued that this model cannot be automatically transferred to private language schools.
The ruling also dismisses claims that a legal gap exists that would allow the public-school provisions to be applied by analogy to private institutions. Such interpretation, the council said, is only possible when lawmakers unintentionally leave an issue unregulated — something it found did not happen in this case.
The language of the law, it noted, explicitly limits the programme to public kindergarten settings.
The NSK further described the introduction of English activities for preschoolers as an “exceptional” and partly experimental measure, requiring a strict interpretation.
Had lawmakers intended to extend the policy to private language centres, the opinion argues, they would have introduced explicit legislation to do so.
No such provision exists, meaning the ban remains in force.
