Özer made statements about an early warning and tracking system founded in order to support the Ministry's activities for increasing schooling rates in all levels of education.

 

Özer stressed that most important capital of a country is its human resources and education is the most important instrument used for increasing the quality of human resources and noted that they have been carrying out important projects and campaigns in order to reach every single child at school age and Türkiye made a great improvement in this manner in the last twenty years.

 

"There are approximately 19 million students in primary, secondary and high schools in Türkiye. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the schooling rate in all levels of education is higher than 95 percent. Schooling rates exceeded 95 percent not only in primary school but also in secondary and high schools. It is a great success story which cannot be normally achieved within twenty years. There are many serious social aid campaigns at the background of this success. We have implemented very important social policies varying from conditional education aid to free transportation, from free text books to scholarship programs, from free meal services to projects about disadvantageous families and female students," said Özer.

 

Özer noted that the Ministry has been implementing a pilot project about schooling rate in secondary education and stated: "Schooling rate in secondary education in 2021 was 90 percent. We increased this figure to 95 percent by activating an early warning system and establishing a call center. We will disseminate this pilot project to all levels of education. Our first priority is including unregistered students at primary, secondary and high school age to the education system. We also plan to provide guidance and psychological support services in order to keep the students who have the risk of dropping out of school in the system in 2023."

 

Concerning the early warning system about students who have the risk of dropout, Özer said that the system is an artificial intelligence supported software developed in order to detect students who have the risk of absence and dropout by using the data in the information systems of the Ministry of the National Education.

 

Minister Özer stressed that there are some speculations about the number of students in education and there is data that confirms the validity of claims that there are 1.2 million unregistered students in the country and 680 thousand female students cannot reach education.

 

Reminding that there are total of 280 thousand and 743 unregistered students, 11,654 of them in primary school level, 28,421 of them in secondary school level and 240,668 of them in high school level, in the country, Özer went on to say that:

 

"Number of unregistered students in primary and secondary school level is only a few. At this point, we see that we have almost achieved our goal to increase schooling rates in primary and secondary schools to 100 percent but even a single unregistered student is a loss for us. We use all of our means in order to solve the problem of a single student and his family," stated Özer.

 

Mahmut Özer stated that they have been actively using MERNİS registration system to detect 280 thousand and 473 unregistered students and founded a call center in order to reach each family and enroll all unregistered students to schools in 2023.