Government plans to shut down private exam courses

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

The tutoring industry in Turkey has been growing enormously for decades due to university entrance tests. DHA photo

Dershanes, private tutoring schools, are to be closed down and the high school entrance exam, known as the SBS, is to be abolished, Education Minister Nabi Avcı announced today.

“We have worked on the legal substructure of the new system to implement it as of next year. Our goal is to open the way for a transformation of qualified educational institutions to become private places and to arrange for our education system to become a stage where students will not need dershanes,” Avcı said in a meeting with members of the press in Ankara.

Avcı also said that the central exam, SBS, would be dropped in favor of a multiple exam system in which students would sit exams every school year.
 
“Concerning the dershanes, our custodians should not rush much for current registration,” Avcı said, since the new regulation may take effect in the 2013-2014 season.

Turkey’s controversial private tutoring sector is a giant industry of nearly 4,000 companies that prepare students for university entrance exams.

There were 4,055 firms offering private tutoring services in Turkey last year, according to the education industry report issued by the Union of Chamber and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), and more than 1.2 million students attended private tutoring courses last year. The number of such schools was only 1,730 in 2000, with 174,496 students.

However, dershane owners oppose the government’s initiative since Turkey’s large private tutoring industry has been growing enormously for decades.