Minister Tekin defends Ministry of National Education's protocols with religious sects: 'We will continue to do so'

Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin stated in his speech at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) that they would continue to sign protocols with religious sects.

"WE WILL CONTINUE TO SIGN PROTOCOLS"

Speaking at the General Assembly after the completion of speeches by members of parliament regarding the budget of the Ministry of National Education and its affiliated institutions, Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin stated that there were 2,709 protocols in effect as of 2023 and said the following:

"Of these protocols, 1,167 are with official institutions, 550 are with NGOs, and 986 are with various NGOs ranging from TEMA to the Red Crescent. Among these, if you add them up, we have about 10 protocols with the structures you call 'sects and communities' and we call 'NGOs'. I would also like to thank those who support us with these protocols. We will continue to sign protocols with them."

"IMPROVEMENT OBSERVED IN MOST AREAS"

Speaking at the Parliamentary General Assembly, Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin said:

"For the 2023-2024 academic year, we have nearly 20 million students and nearly 1 million 200 thousand teachers in public and private schools. We are striving to use a language that embraces all 86 million. I will read three reports from the OECD PISA report regarding developments that you do not accept as a respectable member of the TBMM. One; it says Turkey is one of the few countries that has shown improvement in most areas for more than 10 years. Two; Turkey is rapidly closing the gap with OECD countries. Three; Turkey is one of the 4 countries that has made steady progress in mathematics and science over the last 20 years. Furthermore, according to the United Nations UNDP 2022 Human Development Report; it has been placed in the 48th position among 191 countries in the human development index, and has been included for the third consecutive time in the 'Very High Human Development' category, which is the highest category in the index ranking."

VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS

"Since we took office, we have viewed our fellow teachers, who work with us in the field, as our greatest stakeholder in the ministry, and we organized an event titled 'Teachers' Room'. In every province we visited, we created the Teachers' Room Platform as a platform where our fellow teachers could share their ideas and shortcomings without restrictions. We took the opinions of even our teachers in the most remote corners of the field on this matter. We have taken some measures to ensure that ministry policies can be shared with the public more effectively and produce results. One of these is the digital addictions of our children, especially mobile phones. To prevent this, we have taken a measure to prevent our students from having mobile phones in classroom environments in our schools. Second; we have made another decision regarding the fight against obesity and digital addiction. We are reorganizing our school gardens so that they become lively places again where our children can play traditional games and release their energy. We desire for our children's games, which reflect Anatolian culture and our reference values, to be played by students again.

Criticisms or unwanted incidents regarding violence against teachers and peer bullying have emerged. We had actually foreseen these with a few points we mentioned in our circular during the summer months. One of these is that we did not want our parents to be in the school, school corridors, and classrooms during class hours. We have tied our teachers' meetings with parents to an appointment schedule only in meeting areas. We have put the issue of attendance or school dropouts on our agenda. In order to resolve the problems our students experience regarding school attendance, we have taken measures that will both warn parents more frequently and ensure that our children spend more time at school. Due to the pandemic environment experienced all over the world, and the measures we took after the February 6 earthquakes, we had seen an increase in the number of students enrolling in open high schools."

70 PASSING GRADE REQUIREMENT IN TURKISH LESSONS

"Because we saw that our children's native language skills were not developing sufficiently and that our children were increasingly moving away from reading habits, we took the following measure during the summer months; One; we developed a mechanism that will measure native language skills based on four basic skills. Two; we abolished the exams we call multiple-choice or tests, especially regarding the Turkish lesson, and returned to classical exams. We introduced the condition that our children in secondary schools must pass their Turkish lessons with a success grade of 70.

After the first earthquake, we reached the provinces of Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, Adana, Hatay, Osmaniye, and Adıyaman, and we immediately identified the educational structures that were in usable condition to meet the urgent housing, heating, etc. needs of the earthquake victims. In each settlement, we placed our earthquake-stricken citizens in our educational institution buildings such as schools, dormitories, hostels, and teacher houses that could be used safely in cooperation with other institutions and organizations. We have completed the maintenance and repair work for all of our educational structures that needed repair. In this context, we made approximately 45 thousand classrooms usable for the 2023-2024 academic year. In addition to these, the assessment of educational structures deemed necessary for inspection and the strengthening work of educational structures that need to be strengthened after inspection are continuing.

We planned to build a total of 22 thousand 39 classrooms in 11 provinces. We opened 2 thousand 571 of these classrooms for service in the 2023-2024 academic year. As a result of the one-on-one meetings we held to meet the housing needs of our teachers, the number of containers needed for teachers was determined on a district basis, and 11 thousand 76 containers were dispatched to the provinces in coordination with AFAD and put into service. In addition, to compensate for the learning losses experienced by our children, we opened support courses in 20 thousand 99 course centers, including those in the summer months, from which 1 million 881 thousand 933 of our students benefited, and we provided scholarship support to 30 thousand 124 students. We carried out our work for 7 thousand 201 of the 18 thousand 189 schools located in high-risk areas built before 2000 that required urgent intervention, and we made a decision for demolition for 2 thousand 897 of them and strengthening for 4 thousand 304 of them."

DEFENDED RELIGIOUS SECTS

"The Ministry of National Education has 2 thousand 709 protocols in effect as of 2023. Of these protocols, 1,167 are with official institutions, 550 are with NGOs, and 986 are with various NGOs ranging from TEMA to the Red Crescent. Among these, if you add them up, we have about 10 protocols with the structures you call 'sects and communities' and we call 'NGOs'. I would also like to thank those who support us with these protocols. We will continue to sign protocols with them. Because they prevent children from joining armed groups. You are uncomfortable with them for this reason. I will continue to sign protocols with those NGOs. I will continue to do this so that my children do not join armed groups, so that they do not become your human resources."

News Source : AA