More than 16,000 classes in kindergartens opened, says minister

ANKARA

More than 16,000 classes in kindergartens were opened in a year within the scope of the “10,000 Schools in Primary Education” project, Education Minister Mahmut Özer has stated.

The project, which was implemented by the Education Ministry in order to strengthen equality of opportunity in education by reducing differences coming from lack of resource between schools, completed.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the project in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, Özer emphasized that the most permanent capital of a country is human capital, adding that his ministry opened a total of 16,100 classes in kindergartens in a year.

“When we started this project, we set out to build 3,000 kindergartens in a year under the coordination of Emine Erdoğan,” Özer said.

“Our goal was to increase the enrolment rate for the ages of 3 and 4, and to reach the enrolment rate at the age of 5 to 100 percent if possible. We built 2,321 independent kindergartens in one year,”

“We provided 16,100 classes to various kindergartens. Normally, five classes correspond to one kindergarten. Therefore, 16,100 classes correspond to 3,220 independent kindergartens,” the minister explained.

“When we added 2,321 to this figure, we created a capacity of 5,541 independent kindergartens in a short period of one year,” Özer pointed out.

In the last 20 years, the schooling rate has exceeded 95 percent for the first time in the history of the country, proving that human capital has been utilized in the most efficient way in the last two decades, he added.