Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer stressed that there has been an important improvement in schooling rates in pre-school and secondary education in the last year.

 

Noting that one of the priorities of his Ministry is to increase the preschool schooling rates to the OECD average, Minister Özer went on to say that: "Within this framework, we focused on inaugurating 3,000 new kindergartens under the auspices of Emine Erdoğan. Within a short period of time, we have opened 1,800 new kindergartens and 14 thousand and 80 new preschool classrooms. When we initiated this project, the total number of schools in Türkiye was 2 thousand and 782. When we consider the fact that we have achieved significant success within a year. The project provided us the opportunity to increase the schooling rate of 5 year old children which was 78 percent a year ago to 94 percent. Our activities continue as planned. We will increase this rate to 100 percent until the end of 2022."

 

Minister Özer stated that the schooling rate in primary and secondary levels reached approximately 100 percent adding that, "Schooling rate in secondary education level increased from 44 percent to 90 percent in the last 20 years. Transition to 4+4+4 system played an important role in the increasing schooling rates in secondary education. A year ago, the schooling rate in secondary education was around 90 percent. We have focused on decreasing absence and drop-out rates in the last year. We implemented many projects, especially about vocational education centers. Our efforts gave results within a short period of time and the schooling rate in secondary education increased from 90 percent to 95.6 percent within a year."

 

Reminding that schooling rates in all levels of education exceeded 94 percent in the last 20 years, Minister Özer said, "Schooling rate of female students in secondary education, which was 39.2 percent in the 2000s, reached 95 percent today. In other words, we have made a very important achievement in the solution of low schooling rates of female students in all levels of education in the last 20 years."

 

Özer stated that their goal is to increase the schooling rate in secondary education to 100 percent next year.

 

"We will implement a broad project in order to increase the schooling rate in secondary education to 100 percent. We have decided to reach all unschooled young people and offer them suitable schooling options," he added.