Addressing school principals, Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer said that the 2021-2022 school year which began on September 6 was carried out adamantly until June 17 despite pandemic conditions and the entire society saw that education institutions were the safest places as long as people obeyed rules.

 

Özer said like claims that teachers did not want to go to school during the pandemic, there are recent allegations that the Ministry of National Education failed to respond to the needs of schools adding that the Ministry has the budget to respond to all these needs.

  

Noting that their main goal is to respond to all needs of schools, Özer said that the Ministry had allocated 8,7 billion liras to schools in 2021 and their budget is enough to purchase different needs of schools varying from stationary to cleaning materials and do required repairs.

 

Özer called on school administrators to join forces to complete preparations for the new school year.

 

"We have allocated 1 billion liras to the Provincial Directorate of National Education in İstanbul for preparations. 500 million liras will be used for buying cleaning materials and stationary, 250 million liras will be used for minor repairs and 250 million is allocated for fixtures and equipment," said Özer.

 

Reminding that like many countries, Türkiye supported children's education through distance education during the pandemic, Özer said, "we all saw that distance education cannot replace face-to-face education. Schools must be opened first and closed last."

  

Stressing that the most valuable asset of a country is its human resources, Minister Özer reminded that Türkiye has a young generation which is an opportunity and allows us to look to the future with hope.

 

Minister Özer stressed that his Ministry focused on preschool education as it is essential in maintaining equal opportunity in education. The Ministry has allocated the required budget and made all plans for opening 3,000 new kindergartens and 40 thousand preschool classrooms.

 

"Until now, we have inaugurated 750 new kindergartens and approximately 9,000 preschool classrooms. In the past, the Directorate General for Basic Education was opening 50 to 60 kindergartens a year. As a result of our efforts, the schooling rate among five year old children increased from 78 percent to 92 percent in the last 6 months. Preschool schooling rate in Beşiktaş district of İstanbul was 45 percent in August 2021 which is below our country's average. Due to this reason, we prioritized İstanbul and decided to open 1,000 kindergartens in this city. With Allah's permission, preschool schooling rate in İstanbul will reach 100 percent until the end of 2022."

 

Özer noted that the Ministry carries out different projects in order to reduce opportunity differences among schools and reminded that 10,000 Schools in Basic Education Project aims at improving the opportunities of ten thousand schools with disadvantages.

 

He stated that another project of the Ministry carried out in order to found libraries at all schools of the country under the auspices of Emine Erdoğan. The Ministry founded 16,361 libraries within two months and 750 of them were established at schools located in İstanbul.

 

Concerning vocational education, Minister Özer said that amendment in the Vocational Education Law No. 3308 provided them the opportunity to enter a phase. He stated that the number of students, apprentices and foremen enrolled in the vocational education centers increased from 159,000 to 520,000. The Ministry set the goal to enroll 1 million students in these centers until the end of this year.  

  

Özer reminded that the newly passed Teaching Profession Law was a new start as it grants new rights to teachers adding that more than 600,000 teachers have applied to career steps exams.

 

The Ministry allocated 292 billion liras for teacher training programs and 210 million liras of this budget will be allocated for school based training programs. 

 

Özer said that rare problems in the gigantic education system are perceived as a general problem of the system adding that, "Please, let's join forces. Let's share our achievements with society. We are here to support you with all of our means."

 

Özer noted that the professional improvement program for teachers will become a platform where academicians and administrators discuss the issues of education and "school climate" is another focus of the Ministry.

 

Özer defined the school climate as follows: "We must maintain a climate at schools so that there will no longer be peer bullying, violence. Schools must teach the values of this country. We continue to organize training programs for teachers in addition to separate programs for school administrators. In May, all science high school administrators got together in İstanbul and their first training program was about history, culture and civilization awareness. Recently, we got together with social science high school administrators. Later, we will have meetings with Anatolia high school and other school administrators. We will also found an administrative academy in İstanbul which will plan training programs for school administrators."