Education Ministry to focus on equality of opportunity in 2023

ANKARA

The Education Ministry’s main goal is to strengthen equality of opportunity in all levels of education throughout the country in 2023, Minister Mahmut Özer has stated.

Reminding that the ministry successfully completed the goals it had set in 2022 and even went beyond some of them, Özer stated that the goal was to strengthen equality of opportunity in 2023 and spread it throughout the country.

“We had set out to build 3,000 new preschools by the end of 2022. We are glad that we doubled our target in a year and created a preschool capacity of 6,004,” Özer explained.

Stating that the rate of schooling at the age of five has increased to 99 percent, the minister said that this rate will be completed to 100 percent in 2023.

The enrolment rate at all levels of education has reached 95 percent for the first time in the history of the country, he added.

His ministry focused on reducing the differences in opportunities between schools in order to strengthen equal opportunities in education, Özer pointed out.

In this context, the ministry implemented the “1,000 School Projects in Vocational Education” with a budget of 1 billion Turkish Liras ($53 million) and the “10,000 School Projects in Primary Education” with a budget of 4 billion liras ($212 million).

“All kinds of needs and demands of all the schools within the scope of the project were met. For the first time, a budget of 7 billion liras ($372 million) was used across all schools. Additionally, we have established libraries in all schools,” Özer noted.

He also announced that they will implement the “10,000 School Project in Secondary Education” in 2023.

The ministry created a climate change action plan in order to raise students’ awareness about the climate crisis and global warming, Özer noted.

Environmental education and climate change course was updated to two course hours per week as part of the elective courses in the middle school education.

Within the scope of the course, projects were designed to develop students’ environmental, water literacy, agricultural, food and ecological literacy skills.