Over 60 percent Syrian children attend school in Turkey: Official

MALATYA – Anadolu Agency

More than 60 percent of Syrian children in Turkey are attending school, an education ministry official said on April 29.

“We have been able to send 62 percent of 975,000 school-aged Syrian children to school. This figure was around 20-30 percent earlier,” Nezir Gül, director general of Lifelong Learning in the National Education Ministry told state-run Anadolu Agency.

There are approximately 3.5 million Syrians in Turkey, who have fled civil war in their country.

“We’ve taken every kind of measure to prevent Syrian children from missing out on their right to education,” Gül said.

“Our goal is to send all school-aged [Syrian] children to school, following what our president [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] says,” he said.

The official said they wanted all Syrian children to receive education in schools instead of temporary education centers.

“We have 318 temporary education centers right now. Our goal is to decrease the number of temporary education centers and make students continue their education in schools,” he added.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations.