Administrators of all social science high schools attended the second History, Culture and Civilization Awareness Seminar organized by the Ministry of National Education in İstanbul.

 

Scientists such as Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı, TÜBA Chairman Prof. Dr. Muzaffer Şeker, Prof. Dr. Sadettin Ökten, Prof. Dr. Fatih Andı, Prof. Dr. M. Sabri Küçükaşçı and Assistant Professor will share their experiences with the school administrators.

 

Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer expressed his happiness to complete face-to-face education without any interruption during the 2021-2022 school year during his speech at the seminar.

 

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all administrators and teachers. It was a real historical step. Whole world, especially Türkiye, realized that schools are not only designed for education but also for psychosocial development, social development, joint culture and artistic activities. We also saw that learning loss can be cured but other losses can't," said Özer.

 

Minister Özer stated that the Ministry decorated all teachers and administrators with certificates of achievement at the end of first and second term due to this reason.

 

Noting that problems concerning accession to education have been solved in the last 20 years, Minister Özer went on to say that, "This is a period when children of this country easily reach to all levels of education regardless of their location as we believe that most valuable capital of our country is the human resources. Resources will not end as long as people's lives and education will shape the quality of human resources. If you fail to educate human resources then it will be hard to build a peaceful, competitive and prosperous society."

 

Özer stressed that Türkiye was 70 years late to achieve the level OECD countries completed after World War II.

 

"We have increased the number of classrooms from 300,000 to 855,000. This did not happen in the 70s, it happened in the 2000s. Low income families and female students benefited most from this achievement. For the first time, the number of female students exceeded the number of male students," said Özer.

 

Noting that damage caused by antidemocratic practices was cured in the last 20 years, Özer said, "Education is now responding to social demands; we have democratized education, we have witnessed the normalization process. In other worlds, we have achieved the most important transformation campaign of education in the last 20 years. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to President Erdoğan for his contribution, support and leadership."

 

Minister Özer stated that they have defined three main priorities namely, preschool education, accession to education and vocational education.

 

"We also prioritized professional improvement of teachers. Our main focus is to support teachers and increase their opportunities. Our first move was the Teaching Profession Law. We also used distance education infrastructure and digitalization for the establishment of Teacher Information Network. For the first time in the history of our Ministry, training program hours per teacher exceeded 94 hours. 3.2 million teachers attended training programs in the first six months of 2022," said Özer.

  

Reminding that the first History, Culture and Civilization Awareness Seminar was organized by the science high school administrators, Özer said that this has a symbolic meaning.

 

"Where we came from and where are we heading? What is the role of schools? What are our roots? What will we say to the World? We will raise students who are compatible and who can compete with their peers in the world," added Özer.