You are weeding them out, but can you keep them?

“It was a weeding-out exam.”

This was the most common phrase heard after the LGS exam, which 1 million students took on Sunday: “The exam was a weeding-out process.”

The LGS exam, which made children sweat with particularly difficult mathematics and Turkish questions, once again caused the problems in the education system to surface.

After several years of private tutoring, study sessions, prep courses, and preparation, students finally took the exam that would determine their fate. Knowing that not every child goes through the same education under equal conditions or has equal opportunities to prepare for the exam, how right is it to subject them to the same type of questions for evaluation? Moreover, we can add to this question: “Is it right for a child planning to enter a science high school and a child planning to enter a vocational high school to be faced with the same questions?”

While the world explores ways of “deeper learning” to help students develop critical thinking, complex problem-solving, adapting learned knowledge to the real world, and independent learning skills, or examines social and emotional learning methods that teach ways to build empathy and healthy, sustainable relationships, our youth are often “weeded out” of the system with a monotonous education system before they can reach their dreams. Being weeded out does not always mean being left out of the system. It can also be said that a student whose talents have not been discovered, whose strengths and weaknesses have not been correctly analyzed, and who has not been channeled toward the right goal is actually being “weeded out.”

Even the phrase “weeding-out exam” is highly problematic in itself... Let’s say students in the top 10 or 20 percent bracket get placed in the schools they want and receive the education they dream of; do these students subsequently make plans to stay in Turkey?

The answer, unfortunately, is “no.”

The main goal behind winning a good high school is actually to get into a good university abroad. Look at the prestigious public high school Istanbul Lisesi, which is entered with full marks in the LGS exam: in 2024, 148 out of its 178 graduates chose to go abroad for their university education. Let’s say the biggest goal of these exams is to identify and place successful students; are we able to keep the students who are placed in the best high schools?

Since the answer is “no,” what do high school entrance exams aim for, and why do they weed students out?

Brain drain is one of Turkey’s biggest problems. Additionally, the fact that students who do not have this privilege and remain in Turkey do not have the opportunity to be placed in schools suitable for their interests, capacities, and talents is also problematic...

As a result of the “a university in every province” education policy, vocational high schools and colleges, which have become increasingly unqualified, have ceased to be points of attraction for families; the result of this policy, combined with unplanned educational structuring, is a surplus of unemployed and unhappy university graduates. The constant ignoring of this problem, which could be solved in a short time with proper planning, results in the unhappiness and unemployment of young people. Moreover, this system, which constantly loses successful students and qualified human resources, also makes brain drain chronic.

In short, those who pass these exams are unhappy, and those who do not are also unhappy... So, what is this contradiction all about?