Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin visited Şile Municipality within the scope of his programs in Istanbul. Minister Tekin met with Şile Deputy Mayor Sacit Terzi and municipal staff and received information about the work carried out, and then attended the opening ceremony of Şile Ayet Azar Aran Defense Industry Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School. Students welcomed Minister Tekin at the school entrance. The program started with the recitation of the Holy Quran by 11th grade student Yasir Efe Fillik.
'WE HAVE NEARLY 200 SCHOOLS WAITING FOR US TO OFFICIALLY OPEN IN ISTANBUL'
Speaking at the opening, Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin said, "We have nearly 200 schools in Istanbul waiting for us to officially open them, 180-odd are the latest figure. We will open them at a time when our President's schedule is suitable. These schools I mentioned are the schools we built from public resources. That is, the schools we built from the general budget, Special Provincial Administrations, İKOP. We want to organize a separate program for the openings of these with the attendance of our President. But I am the Minister of National Education. "I am only going to the opening of schools built by our philanthropists. My reason for going is to thank our philanthropists in the presence of our students, teachers, parents and participants, to say 'May God bless you' and 'May God accept your good deeds'. That's why I'm here. Thank you very much."
'THERE ARE VERY INTERESTING ANECDOTES IN THOSE LETTERS ABOUT Türkiye BEFORE 2002'
Minister Tekin said, "The Prime Minister of the period, Mr. Bülent Ecevit, is launching a project. And he says, 'Let's write a letter to the 100th anniversary of the Republic. Let everyone tell what kind of a Republic of Turkey they dream of for the 100th anniversary of the Republic.' A campaign starts, and PTT manages this campaign. The demands, suggestions, and letters about Türkiye's dreams written for education in this campaign were delivered to me, as the Minister of National Education, by PTT on October 29, 2023. We read these letters one by one. There are very interesting anecdotes in those letters about Türkiye before 2002. And unfortunately, there is an educational environment that does not suit the Republic of Turkey and the young generation of the Republic of Turkey. When we look at it in terms of physical capacity, our teachers imagine something like this in those letters; They say, 'Hopefully, we can teach in classes of 45-50 people in the 100th year of the Republic.' Look, our teacher dreams of teaching in classes of 45-50 people. So he probably teaches classes of 70-80 people. Another teacher says, "Hopefully, in the 100th year of the Republic, we will have schools where our children can meet their toilet needs." "So let's see what physical criteria our school buildings meet," he said.
'PISA ADMINISTRATORS USED THE STATEMENTS "Türkiye HAS EXPERIENCED AN EDUCATION, AN EXTRAORDINARY EDUCATION REVOLUTION IN THE LAST 20 YEARS"'
Minister Tekin said, "Another issue is that there is a generally accepted structure that evaluates the education and training infrastructures of countries in the international arena in terms of both physical infrastructure capacity, human resource capacity and academic qualifications. The PISA evaluation mechanism established within the OECD. In the PISA cycle in which Turkey participated for the first time in 2003, it could not be among the top 30 in any field among the 38 OECD member countries. Now we turn back and look at today's Turkey. Not long ago, just 10 days ago." OECD's 2025 evaluation meeting was held in Bratislava. There, OECD administrators and PISA administrators made the following statements about Turkey: 'Turkey has experienced an education, an extraordinary education revolution in the last 20 years.' Look, this is very important, both in terms of the quality of our physical structures, in terms of the number of students per teacher and in terms of human resources.
'CONTRIBUTION OBSTACLE HAS BEEN IMPOSED FOR CHILDREN GOING TO VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL'
Minister Tekin said, "With the Republic, Turkey has seriously accelerated the vocational education movements that started before the Republic. In the 1980s and 1990s, the schools that provided vocational and technical education in this country were the schools that accepted students by examination. Unfortunately, on February 28, 1997, there were people in Türkiye who were disturbed by this. There were people who were disturbed by the success of politics and the development of the country and how they could pave the way for Imam Hatip high schools and vocational high schools." They published a declaration saying that they could cut it and imposed it on the government. And when the government refused to do this, the number of students in our vocational and technical education schools in Türkiye dropped to 17 percent. The middle sections of vocational high schools were closed down. The coefficient barrier was imposed on children attending vocational high schools. And unfortunately, we experienced such a Türkiye. "The student ratio in schools dropped to 2 percent, and in vocational and technical education it dropped to 17 percent. Starting from 2002, with the determined will of our President, we started to take steps to eliminate the destruction caused by this February 28 coup," he said.
'WE HAVE DONE REVOLUTIONARY WORK IN VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION SINCE 2013'
Minister Tekin said, "We have done truly revolutionary work in vocational and technical education in Türkiye since 2013. Look, there was no such theme before 2013. All of our high schools were standard vocational and technical education high schools. There were no thematic vocational high schools either. Think of a vocational high school, there is a gastronomy department next to it, next to it there is an accounting department, next to it there is a furniture decoration department, it is a messy structure. As of 2013, we want to both raise the reputation of vocational and technical education and to increase the number of students who accept students in vocational and technical education. "We took very important steps to eliminate the grievances they experienced. I was personally involved in this process as the Undersecretary of the Ministry of National Education. And at the point we have reached today, I have to say these. First of all, 45 of the 100 students who graduated from secondary school this year went to vocational high school. This is very important."
