Private tutoring centers to operate with new regulations, minister says

Gülseven Özkan - ISTANBUL

DHA photo

Private tutoring centers, known as “dershanes,” will continue to operate but under the name “private education center” and with a maximum of 16 students, Education Minister Nabi Avcı has said after a longstanding debate over a past court ruling on the closure of thousands of dershanes.

Avcı elaborated on a newly introduced amendment on private tutoring centers that paves the way to keep dershanes running under certain conditions.

As part of the amendment, dershanes should be transformed into, in both name and format, “private education centers” by a Sept. 1 deadline.

The centers will be able to offer courses in three science categories, Avcı said.

“Students will choose one of the three main science categories. The category a student seeking to enroll in a medical school will choose will be different than that of a student wanting to study literature,” Avcı said.
Avcı said classes would feature a maximum of 16 students of the same age. “The number can be lower, but not higher than 16.”

Private education centers could hold classes every day except Sunday, while middle-school and high-school graduates can attend courses six days a week, Avcı said.

The statement came less than a month after the Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that closing dershanes was a restriction of the right to education.

The top court’s justified decision on the annulment of a law phasing out private tutoring centers, whose prospective closure had been interpreted as a move against the movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, an ally-turned-foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stated that the law was unconstitutional, in regards to the human right to education and brought unmeasured limitation to the right of private enterprise.