Enrolling a Foreign Child in a Greek Public School

The reassuring part comes first: in Greece, a place in the local public school is a right, not a favour granted at the headteacher's discretion. A child cannot be turned away for speaking no Greek, and cannot be refused because the school has not formed a reception class. The work for you as a parent is administrative rather than a matter of persuasion. Get the paperwork in the right order, and the enrolment itself is routine.

The documents you need to enrol a foreign child

To enrol a foreign child, you submit the child's birth certificate (with an Apostille and an official Greek translation), the student health certificate (ΑΔΥΜ) completed by a doctor, the vaccination booklet, and proof of your address of residence, under Presidential Decree 79/2017, articles 6 and 7. For primary school you also need a certificate of kindergarten attendance.

The exact list depends on the school level. Under Presidential Decree 79/2017, foreign pupils enrol in kindergarten on submission of a birth certificate or an equivalent document, officially translated, with no requirement that the certificate be recently issued. The table below sets out the standard file, by level, for the 2026-2027 year.

Documents required to enrol a foreign child, by school level (2026-2027). Source: ΠΔ 79/2017, articles 6 and 7 (Ministry of Education).

Document	Kindergarten (προνήπιο/νήπιο)	Primary Grade 1 (Α΄ Δημοτικού)
Birth certificate, officially translated, with Apostille	Required (foreign pupils)	Required (foreign pupils)
Kindergarten attendance certificate (βεβαίωση φοίτησης)	Not applicable	Required
Student health certificate (ΑΔΥΜ), doctor-completed	Required	Required
Vaccination booklet (proof of required vaccines)	Required	Required
Proof of address of residence	Required	Required
Special-needs opinion (Κ.Ε.Δ.Α.Σ.Υ., the diagnostic support centre), if applicable	If applicable, not a precondition	If applicable, not a precondition

Two of these deserve their own explanation, because they are where families most often lose time: the birth certificate and the health certificate.

The birth certificate: get the Apostille first, then translate

A foreign birth certificate is only accepted once it has been authenticated and rendered into Greek, and the order of those two steps matters. Doing them the wrong way round means paying for the translation twice.

The Apostille

A foreign public document, such as a birth certificate, must carry the Apostille under the Hague Convention of 1961. The Apostille is issued by the competent authority of the country that issued the document, not by a translator, a lawyer, or a consulate, and it must be obtained before the translation. Because it can only be issued in the country of origin, it cannot be obtained from inside Greece, so arrange it before you travel or ask relatives to obtain it for you. The Greek side of the process is explained by the Ministry of the Interior's Apostille service.

The official translation

Once the Apostille is on the document, the birth certificate is officially translated into Greek. An official translation is produced by the translation service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or by a certified lawyer or a sworn translator. A translation done by a friend, however fluent, is not an official translation and will not be accepted for school documents.

Student health certificate (ΑΔΥΜ)

The student health certificate (Ατομικό Δελτίο Υγείας Μαθητή, or ΑΔΥΜ) is required to enrol in kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 4 of primary school, and the first grade of gymnasium and of lyceum. It is completed by the responsible physician, in practice a paediatrician or a GP, and once submitted it is valid for three school years in primary and secondary education (Joint Ministerial Decision, ΦΕΚ 1296 Β/2014).

In kindergarten the certificate covers the whole time the child attends, so it is not repeated each year. You do not obtain the ΑΔΥΜ from the school: you take your child to a doctor, who examines the child and completes the form. You then submit the completed certificate to the school along with the vaccination booklet or other proof that the required vaccinations have been done. Details of the certificate are published on the government's mitos.gov.gr service catalogue.

When to enrol: the March window and enrolling mid-year

Enrolment applications for public kindergarten and primary school open in early March each year (2 to 23 March 2026 for the 2026-2027 year) and are submitted online with the parent's personal Taxisnet credentials. Foreign pupils, however, are not bound by that window: the Ministry of Education's circular states that they enrol at any time during the school year, at the neighbourhood school nearest their permanent residence.

For the standard September start, kindergarten applications go through the platform proti-eggrafi.services.gov.gr and Grade 1 applications through adimotikou.eservices.minedu.gov.gr, with the final placement following your permanent-residence address and the school-district boundaries. The Ministry of Education publishes the exact dates and links each year.

Take a family that moves to Thessaloniki in November with a six-year-old. The March window for the current year has long closed, but that does not matter. The parents take the Apostilled and translated birth certificate, the ΑΔΥΜ health certificate, the vaccination booklet and proof of their address to the public school nearest their new home, and the child is enrolled in Grade 1 mid-year. The online platform is the route for a September start, not the only door into the school.

Which year your child enters: age and school level

Age decides which class your child joins, and the rules are fixed to the calendar year. Under ΠΔ 79/2017, kindergarten takes two age groups: προνήπια, who turn 4 by 31 December of the enrolment year (born in 2022 for 2026-2027), and νήπια, who turn 5 (born in 2021). Compulsory attendance from the age of 4 was introduced by Law 4704/2020 and applies across the country, so both age groups now enrol. Primary Grade 1 takes children who turn 6 by 31 December of the enrolment year (born in 2020 for 2026-2027).

For grades above Grade 1, a foreign child who has studied elsewhere submits a Title, a Transfer Certificate, or an Attendance Certificate from the previous school instead of starting from the beginning. This means a child who arrives partway through their schooling is placed in the appropriate year.

If your child does not speak Greek: reception classes (ΖΕΠ)

A child who speaks little or no Greek is supported through Reception Classes in Educational Priority Zones (Τάξεις Υποδοχής ΖΕΠ), not held back from enrolling. The first type, Τ.Υ. I ΖΕΠ, gives intensive Greek of up to 15 hours a week for up to one academic year, extendable. The second, Τ.Υ. II ΖΕΠ, supports pupils who already have basic Greek for up to two years, and exceptionally three. The programme is described by the Ministry of Education.

The important point for a parent is what a reception class is not: it is not a precondition of enrolment. A child cannot be refused a place because the school has no reception class, and cannot be made to wait for one to be formed before starting lessons.

Enrolling when your documents are incomplete

Where a foreign minor cannot yet produce the full file, the law still allows enrolment. This covers beneficiaries of international protection, asylum applicants, children from areas with unstable conditions, and third-country nationals without full residence status, under Law 4251/2014, article 21, as referenced in ΠΔ 79/2017. Missing personal details are declared by the guardian through a Responsible Declaration (Υπεύθυνη Δήλωση), the school cooperates to complete the file, and the deadline to produce the documents may be extended by up to three months.

That legal guarantee is close to absolute, and it is worth sitting alongside the numbers. The count of foreign pupils in Greek secondary education rose 16.5% in the 2022/2023 school year compared with the year before, according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ΕΛΣΤΑΤ). Yet UNICEF Greece and UNHCR report that language barriers, system capacity and paperwork conducted entirely in Greek remain the real obstacles to attendance, and access gaps persist where a year-group is full or a reception class cannot be formed. The lesson for a family is practical: the right to enrol is strong, so if a school hesitates, the paperwork and the decree are on your side, and the neighbourhood school is where the process belongs.