Village Life Center was opened with a ceremony held in Üzümveren Village of Güroymak district of Bitlis within the scope of the project to reopen village primary schools that are not actively used by the Ministry of National Education and turn them into living centers.
Speaking at the opening of Üzümveren Primary School and Village Life Center, Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer expressed his happiness to be in Bitlis and to bring the village life center to life.
Stating that the reopened village primary schools have a 30-40-year-old story, Minister Özer said, “When the migration from the villages to the cities started, the Ministry of National Education took this flow into account and implemented bussed education free of charge. After the village schools were emptied, the bussed education mechanism was activated so that our children could access good schools in the nearest destination. At the same time, it provided that all our children who benefit from transported education have free lunch every day. Especially after the Kovid process, we have seen that we have started to experience a very critical process with the influxes towards villages and districts. Serious traumas began to occur in supply chains all over the world. Agriculture has again started to correspond to the most critical areas of countries such as defense industry and energy. This has increased the mobility towards villages and agricultural areas. Here, as the Ministry of National Education, we wanted to open our village schools to the service of our citizens and students, in a situation that has been brought by the trend from villages to cities, towns and big cities in the past, but is now reversed.” he said.
Reminding that they have also made the necessary legal arrangements for this, Minister Özer continued his words as follows: “Now, regardless of the number of students, we will be able to open village schools in all our villages, in all our villages where there are students, in all the villages of our provinces. Not only that, we also reduced the 10 student criteria for opening kindergartens in our village schools to 5. Only with this step, 12 thousand of our puppies have been admitted to kindergartens in village schools in the last six months. If there is no possibility to use them as village schools and kindergartens, we will now use these buildings as public education centers. In other words, in the service of our citizens, mothers, fathers, brothers, uncles, and young people in the village, we will bring this service to their feet with public education centers, if there is education they need for any field of life such as agriculture and animal husbandry. Thus, we will make our villages much stronger, much more dynamic, and much more stable.”
Pointing to the increase in enrollment rates in Turkey in the last 20 years, Minister Özer said, “While the preschool enrollment rates for 2000-year-olds were 5 percent in the 11s, it is now 93 percent. Our enrollment rates in secondary education have increased from 44 percent to 90 percent. Our enrollment rates in higher education exceeded 14% from 48%. In other words, in this period, the access of our children and youth to education at all levels of education, from pre-school to primary school, from primary school to secondary school, from high school to higher education, has been increased. Why was it increased? Because the largest capital of countries is human capital… The most permanent and sustainable capital is human capital. It is the education system that will increase the quality of human capital, compete with other countries, and train young people. We have been able to experience this development, which developed countries achieved long before the 2000s, in the last 75 years with a 20-year delay.” made its assessment.
Stating that all the damages of social engineering projects on education were treated in the last 20 years before the 2000s, Özer continued: “Imagine that while our headscarved girls and women are deprived of their right to education, this problem is being resolved in this period. Remember the coefficient application. This was the period when this practice, which restricted the access of students going to imam hatip high schools and vocational high schools, to higher education and alienated successful students from these school types, was also canceled and compensated. Apart from the imam hatip high schools, which are also social demands, the demands of our students in secondary schools for lessons related to the life of our Prophet, the Qur'an, and religious knowledge were met. Our headscarved teachers were able to attend classes wearing headscarves during this period. In other words, the last 20 years have been a period in which both social demands were taken into account in education and democratization and at the same time schooling rates reached the maximum level. Here, there is a leader of this era. These did not happen spontaneously. Our Honorable President has always given education the first priority since its inception. The biggest share of the budget in the last 20 years has always been education. On behalf of our children, on behalf of our parents, on behalf of our teachers, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our President from Bitlis, Üzümveren Village, for their support to education.”
Özer thanked everyone who contributed to the opening of the school and the life center, and then, together with the members of the protocol, cut the opening ribbon of the village life center.
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