School guidance and psychological consultancy services and guidance and research centers affiliated to the Ministry of National Education provided guidance services to 7 million students and 5.5 million parents between March 23 and May 7, 2020. Guidance and psychological consultancy services provided by school guidance counselors to groups or single persons are recorded every day in the e-Guidance system. According to the data obtained from the e-Guidance system, handling stress, healthy life and psychosocial support programs offered to groups within protective and preventative measures ranked first. First 4 provinces which reached most students on handling stress skills and healthy life subjects were İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir andKocaeli. Most frequently demanded support in educational guidance services was time management and motivation while profession definition and issues that should be considered while choosing a profession were the most popular topics in vocational guidance. Students mostly demanded personal help in harmonization, motivation and how to set target subjects. In addition to students, parents asked for healthy life suggestions and psychosocial support from guidance services.  It is observed that parents usually asked personal guidance servicesregarding academic subjects.

 

Commenting on the subject, Minister of National Education Ziya Selçuk stated that while the Ministry has been supporting education of students by using distance education methods, it also put psychosocial support methods into use for students and parents during this tough period. Minister Selçuk recalled that within this framework, the Directorate General of Special Education and Guidance has prepared and published separate guides for students, young people and parents in an effort to support them to normalize the fear of the pandemic and said, "I am happy to see that these guides are used actively in the field. Moreover, special education and guidance counselors working in our "Special Education and Guidance Services Information Line" call centers established in 81 cities of the country are giving support to our students and parents on the phone. Last week, we put a nice mobile application for our children who need special education. Our colleagues worked very hard and for long time in order to develop this application and now it is put into use for free. Context of the application will be updated regularly. Now, we are going to publish support books based on characters named "Elif and Alp" for pre-school and primary school children. This book will be the first of a series of support books. Our friends are working on it. Adventures of same characters will continue in the coming series." 

 

Underlining the importance of psychological support and guidance services, Minister Selçuk said; "During these days when our students had to stay away from face-to-face education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in addition to our academic development activities, our guidance and psychological consultancy services continue in order to support social, emotional and career developments of our students.  We provided guidance services to 7 million students and 5.5 million parents between March 23 and May 7, 2020 through theschool guidance and psychological consultancy services and guidance and research centers. I am very happy to serve guidance services on such a large scale. We continue to be on our children's and parent's side with all of our means. I would like to thank Deputy Minister Mahmut Özer who coordinated this process, Director General of Special Education and Guidance Services Mehmet Nezir Gül and his colleagues and special education and guidance teachers."