REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
RESEARCH, PLANNING AND COORDINATION BOARD

NATIONAL EDUCATION AT THE BEGINNING OF 2001

DECEMBER 2000

PREFACE

For the integration of our country with the world in peace and for preservation of national and cultural values within this integration process, there are significant roles that have to be assumed by education.

The developed countries of the world are speedily moving to information era. In catching up with the information era and in the formation process of information society, the significance of increasing the quality of human force and to have a developed communication infrastructure is continuously increasing. The biggest contribution to development of developing countries in the 21^st century shall be investment in human resources and improvement of infrastructure.

This approach, as accepted by the Eighth Five-Year Development Plan, makes it compulsory to transfer more resources to education and training in the next five years and to make our education reach a level that shall continuously renew itself.

The enrolment ratio in the term of Seventh Five-Year Development Plan was 9,8% in pre-primary education, 97,6 in primary education, 59,4% in secondary education and 27,8% in higher education. The number of students at the levels of pre-primary, primary and secondary education has reached 13 million and the number of teachers to 500.000.

One of the biggest steps of the Republic era, eight year compulsory primary education was begun to be implemented in 1997 and in the recent three years infrastructural investments had gained momentum so as to provide better education opportunities to our children. The Fixed Number of Teaching Personnel Regulation prepared with the purpose of providing teachers to every student as a necessity of equal opportunity was also put into effect. Implementations to increase quality in education have also started in this period.

At the end of Eighth Five-Year Development Plan, the targets are to reach the enrolment ratio of 25%, to reach 100% enrolment ratio in primary education and to make this continuos by investing in quality, to reach 75% enrolment ratio in secondary education with more emphasis on technical and vocational education, and to reach 37,3 enrolment ratio in higher education; 28,3% being in formal education. The long-term target is to increase the term of compulsory education to 12 years.

In year 2001, which is the first year of Eighth Five-Year Development Plan, each school to be built, each teacher to be trained, each program to be developed and each project to be implemented shall have great contribution to make us reach the qualitative and quantitative targets that shall make us a selected member of contemporary civilization.

“National Education at the Beginning of 2001” prepared accordingly tries to present the education system, its purposes, quantitative and qualitative developments in education, studies, plans and new approaches regarding education. I hereby thank the contributors of this study.

ENTER

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Ministry Of National Education
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