Education Ministers from the 38 OECD member states and 6 OECD candidate states and representatives from the international agencies such as UNESCO and the European Council attended the OECD Education Ministers' Summit held in the French capital Paris.

 

Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer attended the "Education: Investing on Future" session organized after the "Re-building an Inclusive and Equitable Society Through Education" opening session organized at the OECD Conference Center.

 

Minister Özer thanked the invite of OECD officials during his address to the participants of the session.

 

Özer cited previous speakers at the session and warned that education alone cannot be enough to build an inclusive and equitable society unless it is supported with social policies.

 

Stressing the important role of education in building an inclusive and equitable society, Özer went on to say that: We cannot make assessments about the education system and schools if we isolate them from the society. Due to this reason, the education system alone cannot play this important role unless we eliminate inequalities and barriers in the society. It is because schools alone did not create inequalities; they only reflect the inequalities in the society"

 

Minister Özer stated that social policies that aim at decreasing inequalities in education and increasing inclusiveness have a crucial place in building an equitable and inclusive society adding that: "Within this context, success achieved in education in the last twenty years in Türkiye is an example for all countries. We have tripled the number of classrooms in order to increase the accessibility to education. We have lifted all barriers in education and we adamantly carry out many social policies varying from conditional education aid to scholarship programs and from free transportation to free textbooks and supplementary sources for the last twenty years. Today, 1.8 million students in Türkiye are benefiting from free meal service.  All these social policies reinforced the quality opportunity and schooling rates in all levels of education exceeded 95 percent for the first time in the history of our country.  We have eliminated all disadvantages of disadvantaged students and we included students who need special education to our education system. Today, 19 million students in Türkiye have access to education with the support of these social policies. Meanwhile, approximately one million Syrian children under temporary protection are benefiting from education services. When we build such an equitable and inclusive education system then we can talk about an inclusive and equitable society."

 

Türkiye's Permanent Representative to OECD Ambassador Kerem Alkin, Deputy Ministers Petek Aşkar and Sadir Şensoy and Director General for EU and Foreign Relations Hasan Ünsal accompanied Minister Özer.