ATHENS – Greece’s international creditors want teachers to work longer hours and have bigger classes as part of reforms attached to ongoing bailouts and austerity measures designed to make the country more competitive and efficient.

Speaking after a meeting with representatives of the Troika of the European Union-European Central Bank-European Stability Mechanisms (EU-ECB-ESM) in Athens, a senior ministry official told Kathimerini that “a clash is unavoidable.”

The creditors, who put up a third bailout, this one for 86 billion euros ($102.32) billion that Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said he would never seek nor accept but did both, also want teachers to be evaluated, a demand Greek civil servant workers are fiercely resisting.

The latest education report published by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found Greece being well below the OECD average in the number of teaching hours per year in general lower secondary education.