Turkish high school entrance exam may be removed

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has urged the removal of the Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG) exam in Turkey, saying that he finds the practice wrong.

“Don’t we have lackings in national education? Yes, we do. We will overcome those. For instance, I don’t want this TEOG thing anymore and I find it wrong now. It needs to be removed,” Erdoğan told private broadcaster A Haber late on Sept. 15, as he added that “they didn’t complete their education with TEOG.”

“There wasn’t any TEOG at our time. You go to school, your grades are known during the education year and you walk with those grades. When you reach the university level, you take the [national] university [entrance] exam. Then you enroll in a university in accordance with your success level,” he also said. 

Saying that parents send their children to courses in order for them to pass the TEOG exam, Erdoğan noted that “we need to get rid of those.”

“What do we need to do? First, we need to increase the level in schools. I also ordered this during my term as prime minister. Let’s give additional classes in some of our schools via the Education Ministry’s own teachers during the weekends. Let’s pay those teachers an amount of money in return,” he added.
 
During the interview, Erdoğan said that the decision to remove or keep the TEOG exam is up to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. 

“As the president of this country, I can tell this to my minister and prime minister once and it will be done [removed],” he said, while urging the removal of TEOG to be carried out quickly.

“Let’s save this country from these. We are not in a primitive situation anymore. Those days are in the past. This country went through a lot, it’s enough,” he added. 

When asked about the details of the system that will be introduced after the removal of TEOG, Erdoğan said that “schools may carry out their own exams.”

“The schools may carry out their own exams and the students may take those. If they pass the exam, then they can enroll in that high school. These are not hard things [to solve]. All of these can be overcome. Actually, we are making things harder with TEOG. Due to it being a central system, it makes things more difficult,” he also said. 

A day after Erdoğan’s remarks, Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz on Sept. 16 presented a report to Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım on the issue.