Cooperation protocol concerning English education and English summer courses was signed between the Ministry of National Education and TRT with the purpose of using TRT education contents at English lessons and summer courses and developing printed and digital education materials.

 

Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer congratulated Ankara TVF Sports High School which came first in the Men's World High School Volleyball Championship during his speech at the protocol ceremony.

 

Özer stated that cooperation with stakeholders of his Ministry gave good results adding that, "We are happy to disseminate cooperation capacity in different fields. We see the paradigm shift in education. At first, we cooperated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for fine arts high schools. We update the curriculum and jointly manage these schools. Then, we decided to jointly manage all sports high schools with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Recently, we cooperated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for the joint management of agriculture vocational high schools. Finally, we decided to sign a cooperation protocol with the TRT for foreign language education."

 

Minister Özer said that his Ministry gave great importance to language education including Turkish.

 

"Our Ministry has taken important steps for the improvement of four basic language skills namely reading, writing, listening and speaking in Turkish education. We design our measurement system according to feedback mechanisms. With Allah's permission, our full membership application to the language commission of the European Union will be approved soon. Our second step is mathematics education.  For the first time, we will open mathematics courses at summer schools as a part of our mathematics campaign. Our goal is to use new methods other than the classic mathematics teaching approach in order to teach mathematics codes and data reading.

 

Minister Özer stated that foreign language education is among the prior issues of his Ministry and despite some successful examples, foreign language education requires improvement.

 

"Within this framework, we focus on English education and decide to go beyond grammar training and implement a new approach by using daily life codes in foreign language education at summer schools," said Özer.

 

According to the protocol, all documentaries and other documents in English owned by the TRT will be used in English summer schools.

 

"TRT is our most important stakeholder. It was our main support during the Covid-19 pandemic. We rapidly used television channels during distance education with their support.  Now, we widen our cooperation to develop new methodologies and approaches in English education," stated Mahmut Özer.

  

Özer announced that in addition to Turkish, mathematics and science support and training courses, his Ministry will add English and Arabic support training courses to the curriculum in the next school year. He added that the Ministry of National Education will engage in a new cooperation with the TRT concerning Arabic education.

 

Meanwhile, TRT General Manager Mehmet Zahid Sobacı said that foreign language knowledge is not an option but a necessity during this era when internationalization dominates both social and business lives. Sobacı noted that TRT is broadcasting on 7 continents in 41 languages.

 

Stating that the TRT had produced thousands of hours of content in various different foreign languages, Sobacı expressed his happiness to see that these contents will become an important part of foreign language education.

 

"I believe that our experience and knowledge will play an important role in helping young people to achieve their goals and developments in foreign language education," added Sobacı.

  

Content of the protocol  

The protocol provides the Ministry the opportunity to use English contents in English courses, foresees joint effort to produce printed and digital teaching materials and foreign language education materials for summer schools.

 

The protocol also includes an article concerning further cooperation with TRT for the production of materials that will measure four basic language skills in English and dissemination of these materials in printed, visual and social media upon the approval of TRT.