Education cannot continue until damage assessment completed: Minister

MALATYA

The decision to suspend schools until March 1 is likely to be extended as education cannot continue until the damage assessment studies are completed in schools in 10 provinces, Education Minister Mahmut Özer has stated.

“In order to normalize life, we first need to normalize education as the main driving force is education. The faster we normalize education, the faster we normalize Türkiye,” Özer stated adding that education will start quickly on Feb. 20 in the other 71 provinces.

They plan is to complete the damage assessment works of all schools in 10 provinces by the end of February, he noted.

“We have not announced that education will start on March 1. We announced that we suspended education until March 1. Maybe we won’t start training on that date, but our goal is to make all our preparations as if we will start education on March 1,” Özer explained.

His ministry carries out district-based and school-based evaluations, not province-based, Özer added.

“Currently, our damage is very low compared to other buildings. We had 20,868 educational buildings. Only 24 of them collapsed and 83 others were severely damaged,” he said.

The ministry has been providing approximately 2 million hot meals daily to earthquake victims in 10 provinces since Feb. 6, when the earthquakes occurred.

Some 600,000 loaves of bread are produced daily and about 5,000 teachers are participating in search and rescue efforts in the 10 provinces.

About 4,000 our teachers are working to improve the psychosocial well-being of our citizens and students.

“We will make sure that our children get over this trauma,” Özer said.