Within the scope of the project to transform the village schools that are not actively used by the Ministry of National Education into village life centers, the collective opening of 1500 new village life centers was held with the participation of Minister Mahmut Özer in a ceremony held in İzmir.
In line with the needs of the village schools, which are not actively used, with the village life center project, kindergarten, primary school, course center, library; It is transformed into areas where educational and social activities such as youth camps will be held, with workshops serving in different fields such as mathematics, nature, science and design.
Within the scope of the project, the total number of village life centers has reached 2, with 1500 thousand village life centers, which were opened collectively in the Kulliye with the participation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as 3 village life centers that were opened collectively today.
In his speech at the ceremony held at the Urla Barbaros Village Life Center, Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer noted that there is a perception that bussed education is associated with the closure of village schools and that this has been done in the last twenty years.
In the last two years, we have included a longing for our villages to meet with education as one of the projects we prioritized as the Ministry. Our priority in the ministry was three main points. The first was pre-school education. The most critical level of education in education systems is pre-school education. Unfortunately, Türkiye could not perceive this very well. As Turkey has been trying to increase the enrollment rates at other levels in the last two decades, pre-school education has not adequately realized what it means in the education system. Pre-school education is where the inequality of opportunity in education begins. If some of the country's children go to pre-school education and some do not, inequality starts there. Then, in the later stage of education, it appears as the difference in success between schools. Especially when we look at the longitudinal studies in America, you will see that; An individual who has attended pre-school education is much longer in education and employment throughout his life than an individual who has not attended pre-school education. In other words, it is a very important opportunity to train qualified people.” made its assessment.
Emphasizing that pre-school education is one of the most critical points for women's employment in Turkey, Özer said: “If the wages a woman receives when she enters employment are comparable to the wages when her child is given pre-school education, a woman will withdraw from employment. With this awareness, we started a preschool education campaign. When I took office on August 6, there were 2 kindergartens in Turkey. We set out to build 782 new kindergartens and we worked so intensely that together with all our friends here, our deputy ministers, general managers, provincial directors, we took every opportunity. We didn't just build new buildings. At the same time, we revised and allocated the idle buildings, and used the daytime parts of the science and art centers. But most importantly, there were empty classes in every school, we brought them into pre-school.”