The History, Culture and Civilization Awareness Seminar organized by the Ministry of National Education as a part of school administrator seminars began in İstanbul.

 

Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer expressed his happiness to attend the opening of the ceremony and mentioned about education investments in İstanbul.

 

"We have allocated 8,9 billion Turkish liras to İstanbul as an investment budget since I was appointed as the Minister of National Education. This is the largest investment budget in the history of the city. Construction of 1,000 kindergarten buildings in the city is an additional investment to the city. In other words, we will allocate more than 10 billion liras to İstanbul until the end of this year," said Özer.

 

Minister Özer stressed that science high schools have an important place in the education system of the county and they successfully represent Türkiye in PISA international student success surveys. They also display performance which is higher than OECD average.

 

"In March 2020, the entire world faced an unpredictable pandemic which affected all sectors. Education was affected most. Most sustainable and permanent capital of a country is the human resources. All sources may run out but as long as there are people, there would be hope for countries. The Ministry of National Education worked in an effort to support students through the EBA digital platform during one and a half year long distance education. But we all see that schools do not offer only education but they are the places where children have the opportunity to interact with their peers, involved in cultural, artistic and sports activities and complete their psychosocial developments. Due to this reason, we have decided that schools are the places which must be closed last and opened first and keeping schools open is a matter of national security. In this light, we have taken required measures in order to start face-to-face education," stated Özer.

 

Minister Özer said that they have proved that schools are the safest places and if they failed to continue face-to-face education, the country would not normalize that quickly.

 

Özer also mentioned the big transition of the education system in the country in the last 20 years and reminded that the schooling rate which was 44 percent in the 2000s exceeded 90 percent today.

    

Noting that the education system in the country includes 1,2 million teachers and 75 percent of existing teachers were appointed in the last 19 years, Özer stated that Türkiye achieved quality based education development.

 

"Architect of this success is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who allocated the largest share of the country's budget to education. Women benefited most from this development. In the 2000s, the schooling rate of female students in secondary education was 38 percent and today this figure is around 88 percent. Moreover, we are working in an effort to maintain equal opportunity in education especially for the socioeconomically disadvantaged families," said Özer.

  

Noting that there has been a paradigm shift in the teacher training programs, Minister Özer said that local directorates of national education and schools have the authority to plan training programs for teachers according to local needs and special requirements.

 

He noted that the Ministry also initiated a teacher and administrator mobility program in order to increase the visibility of good examples in the education system.

  

Reminding that our country is among those which increased its grades in international surveys like TIMSS and PISA despite its increasing number of students, Özer stressed that the education system in the country is very strong.

 

Özer noted that the Ministry increased its professional improvement budget by 35 times.