"The Technical Support for Increasing Attendance and Schooling Rates in Secondary Education Project" (ODAP) funded by the EU and Türkiye through the Human Resources Development Program Authority was launched during a ceremony participated by the Deputy Minister of National Education Petek Aşkar, EU Türkiye Delegation and higher officials of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. The Directorate General for Secondary Education affiliated to the Ministry of National Education is the beneficiary of the project.

 

Deputy Minister Aşkar said during her speech at the ceremony that schools make important contributions to the education of students and have a major place in the lives of people.

 

Aşkar went on to say that, "Main focus of our Ministry is to reinforce equal opportunity in education and increase accession to quality of education. In the last 20 years, schooling rates in all levels of education in our country are close to the OECD average figures. Türkiye achieved significant development in accession to education. I believe that many projects that we have implemented in an effort to increase the quality of education made an important contribution to our success."

 

Stating that enrolling every single student to schools is the duty of the Ministry of National Education, Aşkar said that ODAP will play an important role in the fulfillment of this duty.

 

The Ministry will give equipment and material support to schools and organize training programs as a part of the project and the outcome of the project will be published as a guide book.  

 

The project will be implemented in 50 schools in 14 cities and it will be finalized in June 2024. It is planned to design innovative software for the "Early Warning System" which will be used for detecting students who have the risk of dropping out from formal education in advance.

 

Moreover, "Prevention, Response and Compensation Integration Model '' for the prevention of dropouts will be developed as a part of the project and this model will be implemented in the pilot cities.

 

Within the context of the project, "Advisor Teaching Guidelines" will be prepared for class teachers and counselors. At the same time, "National Strategy Document and School Action Plans" will be prepared in order to develop national policy about the subject.