ATHENS – Textbooks that Greek high schoolers are using are so out of date they go back to 1998, three years before the new international airport opened, four years before the country got into the Eurozone and refer to antiquated technology.

The New Democracy government said the texts will be replaced along with those from similarly old schoolbooks for kindergarten, and primary and secondary schools with no explanation why it took years to do.

The government will also modernize the material in curricula, said Kathimerini, to try to bring Greek schools into the 21^st Century, 20 years after it began,  noting that, for example, a secondary school textbook on information technology, written in 2006, refers to discs and CD-ROMs in the age of smartphones.

Most study programs are in need of an overhaul, with those for kindergarten, primary and secondary schools dating to 2003 and for senior high to 1998, the paper said.

The Education Ministry plans to revise 139 textbooks and to draft 123 new study programs, Kathimerini understands. Also, 330 existing study programs are to be updated along with books on vocational education, the report added.

It will take two years to do however and the first new books won't be issued until September of 2021, leaving this year's students to keep studying old material, with the plan also to include upgraded teacher training programs.