Minister Tekin provides figures: There is no other teacher population this large funded by the public

Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin, speaking at a holiday celebration ceremony organized by the AKP Erzurum Provincial Presidency at Yakutiye City Square, said that the country has been debating the new curriculum for two and a half months. Explaining that they have done two things regarding this issue, Tekin said:

"One, let our curriculum catch up with the curricula of other countries we compete with in the world, let it be the same curriculum. Let us not teach our children more than they do, nor less than they do. Therefore, we tried to create a curriculum in line with universal standards. What I am trying to explain is this: We continue to load information with the curriculum of 30-40 years ago, with the perspective of 30-40 years ago. 

The world has abandoned this. Secondly, we did this: we said that our culture, our tradition, our civilization, our children should possess the culture of this civilization, and we should pass this accumulation on to future generations. When it is a holiday, let our children not give up the tradition of kissing the hands of their elders. When it is a holiday, no matter where our children live, let them come and visit the graves of their elders, let them kiss the hands of their elders in their hometown. We want these traditions to continue, we want our children to learn these.

The opposition says there is no need for these. I say that our people, our nation desires this, wants this. We want our values, the values that keep us together, that make us a nation, our common denominators, to be passed on to future generations. We have made such a curriculum change.

Hopefully, with your prayers and support, our children will be raised with the new curriculum starting from September," he said.

"WE HAVE TEACHERS ABOVE THE WORLD AVERAGE"

Explaining that classes were held in classrooms of 60-70 people about 20 years ago and that one of the teachers at that time dreamed of teaching in classrooms of 40, Tekin pointed out that the number of students per classroom is currently 22.

Stating that there are currently 1 million 100 thousand teachers, Tekin continued as follows:

One out of every 80 people you see on the street is in the status of a teacher whose salary is paid by the Ministry of National Education. Look, this is a massive figure. The number of students per teacher has dropped from figures in the 30s and 40s to 13-14 now. These are figures that are truly above world averages. 

In no part of the world is such a large teacher population funded by the public.

All of these are things done during the Justice and Development Party period because our President has allocated the largest share from the general budget to the Ministry of National Education in the last 20 years. 

We forget quickly. I wanted to remind you of these. We are not content with what we have done, but we must show respect to the people who did these things, knowing what kind of sacrifices were made, and we have to remind ourselves of these frequently. We will continue to do good things.