Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer made statements regarding the education agenda on NTV live broadcast and answered questions. Özer announced that they will start the process for the Teaching Career Stages Exam on May 18.
Highlights from Minister Özer's statements: Reminding the transformations carried out in the field of education in the last twenty years, Minister Özer stated that they started to provide free meals to pre-school students as of February 6 all over Turkey and said: “We have expanded pre-school education, increased the capacity. We increased it very seriously. When I took office, the schooling rate for five-year-olds in Turkey was 65 percent and there were 2 kindergartens in Turkey. We set out to build 782 new kindergartens, and at the end of about a year and a half, we built 3 kindergartens. In other words, we created new kindergarten capacity, almost three times the existing kindergarten, and increased the enrollment rate from 6 percent to 700 percent at the age of five. In fact, although pre-school education is not compulsory, it even exceeded the compulsory schooling rate in primary, secondary and high school. In order to make this sustainable, we started to provide free meals in pre-school education all over Turkey as of February 65th. We met with our women in Ordu yesterday, there was a meeting about evaluating pre-school education. There I said that from now on, the pre-school education fees in Turkey were paid by the governorships in the amounts determined by the commission, and the parents gave it voluntarily. We remove it completely. We have finalized all our work on this. The regulation was also published in the Official Gazette tonight. Now, as of the 99.86-6 academic year, no money will be taken from parents under any name, whether they are full-time or half-time. Thus, we will make the greatest contribution to this country regarding pre-school education.”
Emphasizing the neglect of pre-school education in Turkey in the past years, Minister Özer emphasized the importance of pre-school education and said, “Actually, pre-school education is the place where the inequality of opportunity in education begins. Preschool education and studies in the education literature show that; When life-long observation is made between the individual who attends pre-school education and the individual who does not, the individual who attends pre-school education stays longer in education and stays in employment longer. What does this mean? It provides the opportunity to train our human resources in a qualified way. And most importantly, it provides a great opportunity for women's employment. Because when a woman participates in employment, especially in big cities, if the gap between the wage she will receive and the wage she will pay when she gives her child to kindergarten or pre-school education, she withdraws from employment. Now that it is completely free, our withdrawn women will also join the labor market.” used the phrases.
Minister Özer noted that pre-school students and students within the scope of bussed education, students who benefit from hostels or do not stay in the hostel but study at the same school, and parents who receive help from the social assistance foundation also offer free meals to their children.
Özer said that they want to build a mechanism where students can eat a healthy meal in the context of healthy nutrition.
Mentioning the reasons for opening village schools since 2022, Minister Özer said, “For two reasons, first; After the covid epidemic, people slowly started to migrate to the villages. In other words, the trend of resettling in places where they can remain more resistant under extraordinary conditions, reverse migration has begun.” said.
Pointing out that the second reason is due to the problems experienced in the food supply chains during the Kovid process, Özer said that food, agriculture and animal husbandry started to form a critical field as much as energy. Özer said, “We said, 'Let's combine these two.' Let's quickly revise the schools, our schools in the village. Let's restore it and not only a place where our children receive pre-school or primary school education, but also establish a public education center for all of them. In other words, let's turn it into a place where our citizens living in the village take public education courses on food, agriculture, animal husbandry or any other field they want, and increase their life skills. We have created a mechanism that brings together the adult in the village and their child or grandchild under the same education roof. With this mechanism, we didn't call it a village school anymore, it said 'village life centre'.” he said.
Özer said: “Our goal in 2022 was to open 2 village schools. We opened 2 thousand 200 village life centers into service. As of now, we have opened 3 thousand 115 village life centers. We will open all village schools in Turkey by the end of 2023. You have to take a horizontal look at the developments and time in Turkey; so where does it come from? You also have to look vertically. When you look horizontally, this corresponds to conscience, it corresponds to respect for labor. 'He was here, he came here.' When you look vertically, without looking at the date, 'What is the instant problem? What is the problem? This is mind. We need conscientious minds. As the Minister of National Education, I say: Although there is compulsory education at primary, secondary and high school levels, the number of students who cannot be reached outside of education, the number of students who have problems with registration but do not register, and the number of children and youth in three levels, who should be students but are not registered, is 94 thousand 984.”
Noting that there are currently 142 thousand 326 students in open secondary schools, Özer said, “7 thousand 774 under the age of eighteen. 134 thousand 552 above the age of eighteen. There are 1 million 112 thousand 765 students in the open high school, 232 thousand 152 under the age of eighteen, and aged eighteen. over 880 thousand 613.” shared his knowledge.
Transferring the latest data on the return of students who have been transferred from the earthquake zone to other provinces, Minister Özer emphasized that the region cannot be normalized under extraordinary conditions without normalizing the education system. Özer said that as the Ministry of National Education, with this understanding from the first day, they have made great efforts to save the students in the earthquake area from the traumatic environment and bring them together with their teacher quickly.
Özer said, “In order to strengthen their psychological strength, we took the student away from that environment in a tent, in a container, and brought him together with his teacher, and we put forward a motto; 'Continue education everywhere and under all conditions.' We achieved that and normalized quickly after that.” used the phrase.
Özer continued as follows: “We divided them into three categories; Kilis, Şanlıurfa, Diyarbakır and on 1 March. We gradually passed Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Adana on 13 March and the other most affected provinces on 27 March. As of April 24, we did not have any unopened districts in Hatay and Adıyaman. This hastened the reversal. It changes drastically. As of today, the number of returning students, that is, the number of students who have registered to other provinces and returned, has reached 76 thousand 683. The highest number of returns to Kahramanmaraş is 24 students. The second is Hatay, 519 thousand 14. The third is Malatya with 159 thousand 10. The fourth is Adıyaman with 913 thousand 9. There were four provinces most affected by the earthquake; Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, Malatya and Hatay. That's where you get the most returns. So, just as we have consistently resisted and kept schools open during the covid epidemic, our experience in the earthquake zone has shown how beneficial this is. Currently, we continue to provide psychosocial support in tents, and education continues in all schools in the region that have been given a sound report by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change.”
Pointing to the fact that the schools in the earthquake area were strong and safe during this process, Minister Özer said that only 20 of the 868 schools were destroyed. Özer stated that currently, most public institutions in Hatay, Kahramanmaraş and Adıyaman use the buildings affiliated to the Ministry of National Education.
“We do not have a single school in Turkey that has a decision to demolish it and continues its education”
Responding to the question asked about the studies on earthquake resistance of schools, Özer continued his words as follows: “As the Ministry, we focus on strengthening and demolition works. At the moment, we do not have a single school in Turkey that has a decision to demolish it and continues its education. We need to highlight this. We did not impose a monetary limit on the provinces regarding these strengthening works. We sped up the reinforcement work by guaranteeing to meet them by using all kinds of resources at full speed as fast as they wanted. Significant progress has been made in Istanbul. Of course, these works will continue. Those whose reports have been received before are updated again according to the new situation, because it is a dynamic process. The Ministry was not caught unprepared for this. It was an issue that had already been on his agenda and had been working on for years. Speed has been given.”
Emphasizing the question regarding the appointment of teachers, Özer said that they have made a very serious appointment of teachers in the last month, and said that they have made the appointment of all candidates who applied for the appointment of teachers with disabilities, and that 234 more appointments will be made, and that they have made the biggest teacher appointment of the last twenty years with the appointment of 45 thousand teachers. Özer stated that new teachers can be appointed in line with the needs.
Referring to the schooling rates at all levels of education, Özer said that the schooling rates at all levels in the history of the Republic had exceeded 99 percent and that the number of students per teacher had been brought to the OECD average.
Expressing that the interviews were abolished in teacher appointments, Özer noted that the appointments will be made according to the KPSS score superiority from now on.
Specialist and Headteacher exam process starts on May 18
Referring to the Specialist and Headteacher system, Özer said, “Approximately 583 thousand of our teachers benefited from this right, about 99 percent of the teachers took the exam, 97 percent were successful, and 583 thousand of our teachers improved their personal rights as expert teachers or head teachers. They went through the training process. As you explained earlier, these exams will be repeated every year. The calendar has been determined; As of May 18, the process begins. We will accept applications between 30 May and 9 June. They will have their training between 17 July and 8 September. As of November 19, we will hold the exam and we will announce the results on November 24, Teachers' Day.” made the statement.
Noting that there are currently 91 thousand 601 teachers who have the potential to apply for specialist teaching positions, Özer said: “10 thousand 60 of these teachers will be exempt from the exam because they have a master's degree. The number of our teachers who have the potential to apply for the head teacher position is 6 thousand 986. Here, too, 11 of our teachers will be exempt from the exam because they have completed their doctorate. Therefore, approximately 100 thousand of our teachers will be subject to these processes again. I wish success to all our teachers.”
Stating that there are demands from specialists and teachers about being a head teacher, Özer said, “There were two very serious demands. First of all, ten years of seniority is required to become a specialist teacher. In the current legal regulation, we have completed the work on reducing this to five years. In other words, expert teachers will be subject to this process within five years without waiting for ten years. In addition, we will abolish the ten-year waiting period for our expert teachers who have a seniority of 20 years or more to become head teachers. Therefore, if our teachers who have been in the profession for twenty years or more have become specialist teachers, they will not have to wait ten years last year, they will be able to apply for the head teacher position immediately. Our legal preparations for this have already been completed. In fact, the pain we experienced was interrupted by the earthquake process. Hopefully, after the new Assembly is formed, it will be sent to the Assembly immediately.” made the statement.
Stating that they never leave the students who will enter LGS in the earthquake zone, Özer said, “We really paid special attention to them and we created 3 support and training centers. We sent our expert teachers working in our question preparation center to the region. Currently, approximately 540 thousand of our students are working in this context. Our Minister of National Defense opened NATO tents in Hatay, Kırıkhan and İskenderun. Our Minister of Energy brought a ship. LGS and YKS courses from ships continue and we have removed the second semester subjects from the scope of the exam. I believe it will be a comfortable exam. After all, the LGS exam is a mechanism that only ten percent of eighth graders get placed. In other words, ninety percent of them are already placed without an exam. There are some serious improvements there as well. I wish success to all our students. Let them be comfortable. In other words, they should not fall into a situation that will affect their performance due to anxiety. Hopefully, we will place all our students already.” found its assessment.
Stating that he wanted to share a good news about temporary workers, Özer said, “We have approximately 30 thousand temporary workers in our ministry. These brothers were working for ten months before, they were dismissed in July and August, and they started again in September. An arrangement has been made; The authority to work for 11 months and 29 days, that is, for a whole year, was left to the ministries. As of today, I will approve all of our workers so that they can work for 11 months and 29 days. In higher education institutions, we have temporary workers who are in this scope. They also need the approval of the Ministry of National Education to be able to work for 11 months and 29 days. Therefore, we will give those approvals when he sends them quickly.” used the phrases.