“Special Interview” with Minister Avcı on TRT Haber TV  
“Special Interview” with Minister Avcı on TRT Haber TV

“Special Interview” with Minister Avcı on TRT Haber TV

Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı answered questions by Canan Reçber on TRT Haber TV on topical issues.

“Special Interview” with Minister Avcı on TRT Haber TV

The Minister of Education Nabi Avcı appearing as a guest on TRT Haber, answered Canan Reçber’s question on the matters concerning topical public issues.

 

Eid message

“Firstly I would like to congratulate your Eid el-Fitr, of our friends in the studio and our guests watching us today, our teachers, students, parents and our people.”

 

“The Constitutional Court annuled an article that it refused to halt its application”

“It would be useful to briefly summarize the events. A law came into force on the 1st of March 2014 regarding the conversion of preparatory schools to high schools or different educational institutions effective from 1st of September 2015. Later on the legislation of March 2014 was brought before the Constitutional Court with an appeal for annulment. The case remained in the agenda of the court until December 2014, about 8 months since it was brought to the court. On December 2014, the court rejected to stop the application of the law. MPs who had appealed to the court also asked the court to halt its application with an interim ruling. This verdict meant “go on with the application”. Hence we observed an increase in the appeals for conversion by the institutions after January, which is crucial when we analyze the conversion process that was relatively slow until the interim decision. I discussed this on various TV shows. This happened as representatives of the educational sector and the owners of preparatory schools believed the court would dismiss the case with regards to its interim decision. The numbers are the following; 2.280 preparatory school out of 3.107 appealed for transition. We asked 2.260 applicants out of 2.280 to carry out their agenda for c onversion as we accepted them to the transformation process to investigate them and decide. While the investigations were ongoing, 967 preparatory schools transformed into private schools, high schools, Anatolian high schools, elementary and secondary schools…

 

And for today…

We still haven’t received the preamble for the verdict of the Constitutional Court so we are speculating on hearsays… This is problematic as the verdicts of the court would be announced with a preamble; this is a binding rule for the Constitutional Court. The preamble decision of the court is still yet to exist.

 

The ruling of the Constitutional Court leaked

 “The ruling of the Constitutional Court is yet to be announced, we haven’t received an official notice, yet we observe hearsays on the verdict of the court especially in certain media instruments; now we are speculating on those hearsays… After the verdict session of the court, after circulation of these speculations through the media, I released on official statement stating that the preamble verdict of the court is yet to be announced and hence it is not appropriate to speculate at this stage and release statements binding the court. Yet the speculations continue. Today is Eid el-Fitr, people will visit their families and this will be discussed in these gatherings… Thousands, hundreds of thousands of families will be in doubt due to these speculations…

Hence we decided to air this program to offer some true insight on the matter and to prevent people from being misled by the speculations circulation in the media.

On this day of Eid el-Fitr we would like to talk about more stimulating subjects but this matter is not as eerie as it is portrayed as you will realize from my statements a little later…

 

“There is no need for our parents, students, teachers, and the sector to panic”

“Now I will explain why our parents, students, teachers, and the sector have nothing to be afraid of.

Last week, due to speculations, we invited the representatives of the educational sector. We worked very closely with the sector in this process of transformation. One and a half months ago the representatives of the educational sector thanked the Ministry of Education for their cooperation in the transformation process as well as the outcome of the process in a meeting held by the umbrella organizations, foundations and institutions representing 70 percent of the sector.

We will continue our cooperation with the private education system on the current situation. As a sign of that, we instructed our Director General for Private Education Institutions to initiate a meeting with the representatives of the sector which took place in our directorate. We discussed every matter in various alternative scenarios in that meeting. I refer to it as “alternative scenarios” as the preamble verdict of the Constitutional Court is yet to be received…

 

 “No one should expect chaos”

“As I said, bearing in mind all the alternatives, ‘what we will do in case of this and that, how to handle it, how to reach the right solutions together’, we met with the representatives of the sector to discuss and the meeting turned out productive.

It is said that the Constitutional Court will announce the preamble decision on Wednesday after the Eid el-Fitr… If that is the case, we will examine the preamble verdict from Wednesday on to see which of the 7 articles are annulled; what is the ground of annulment is it annulled totally or partially. Thus we will do whatever needs to be done about each of the 7 articles. As I said we have alternatives for various scenarios as we did in the past… We carried out our work with regards to all the possible outcomes since the MPs applied to the court for the annulment of the legislation. Hence no one should expect chaos. We will share all the proposals with the sector and the regarding parties to come up with the best solution possible as soon as the preamble verdict is announced.”

 

 “The rulings of the Constitutional Court won’t be retroactive”

“As a rule, the verdicts of the Constitutional Court will not be retroactive. Right now we have educational institutions defined in the law of the Private Education Institutions. These institutions defined in the law include private schools, in other words elementary, secondary and high schools and courses. Also it used to include preparatory schools which were removed from the law as these institutions would be transformed from September 1, 2015. Hence if the court decides to annul the legislation, it would invalidate the preparatory schools that we intended to transform, as preparatory schools are no longer defined within the law of the Private Education Institutions.”

 

Basic high schools will continue their activities

“One of the highlights of today in the media was the following: It is said that the Constitutional Court realized this just yet and is preparing a preamble as ‘these institutions cannot operate as preparatory schools but their applications should be accepted as courses’… I will not discuss the legal dimension of such a proposal or whether it is possible or not but we can offer these institutions which are not yet transformed or that applied to be transformed but haven’t received their license yet and which desire to retrieve their application: as I said this is hypothetical as we haven’t received the preamble decision; you can transform into institutions defined within law which are private schools, study centers and courses… As you know there are different types of courses including KPSS (Public Personnel Selection Examination) and follow-up courses. And for basic high schools… There is no problem for the institutions applied or planning to apply to be converted into basic high schools, who received their license or are still waiting to receive it. Existing basic high schools will continue their activities, the applications waiting to be reviewed and new applications will be reviewed and the preparatory schools that are found eligible to be transformed into basic high schools will continue to receive their license.” 

 

Can the court reach a verdict on the basic high schools?

“The appeal of the MPs on the annulment of the legislation does not include any request on basic high schools. Hence, the basic high school is a new institution. The basic high schools will continue their activities. Another matter that the public are concerned is the following: Can the institutions desiring to transform into private schools still do so? They can convert.

967 institutions meeting our criteria have already transformed into private schools. The other 1293 out of 2.260 total applicants who meet the criteria will continue to receive their license; there is no problem about their transformation. One might ask the following: “Can the 1293 applications who haven’t received their license yet, withdraw their applications?” They can withdraw their applications.

 

‘Cannot shut down’ verdict of an institution not defined in the law

“Preparatory schools can become courses or schools but they are no longer defined in the law as preparatory schools. The category of institution that the Constitutional Court decided –if that is the case- that it could not shut down is no longer defined in the law… When the court annuls legislation it is not authorized to promulgate old legislation. Those who desire to transform can transform into courses, schools, study centers or follow-up courses. We can advise them to transform into follow-up courses. What are follow-up courses? They are free of charge courses held on weekends initiated last year in public schools for children who needed additional help in their curricular activities. This implementation was first applied as a pilot scheme in 18.290 formal education institutions and 179.306 courses. These courses are offered upon requests from the students and parents; when 10 students (minimum requirement) apply with the request of additional courses on mathematics, biology, physics, Turkish, English or any subject they desire, we offer them a follow-up course.”

 

 “How many students requested and received follow-up courses last year?”

2 million 687 thousand 946 student received free of charge follow-up courses in public schools last year. We believe that this will increase next year. 112 thousand teachers participated in these follow-up courses last year, on this note I would like to thank them again. We increased the fees of our teachers by 100 percent due to their participation in the follow-up courses. Although this is an important increase, we would have liked to offer them more. Right now this is not possible but it is important to remind everyone again that we are grateful to our teachers. Effective from next year, we will offer 50 percent more to the teachers who participate in follow-up courses till the end of the year. This is an important piece of news for our teachers.

This is one of the scenarios we have in mind for the institutions who are currently preparatory schools or applied for transformation but are desiring to withdraw from the process. However, as I said, we need to receive the preamble decision of the Constitutional Court to see what we are able to do with regards to the verdict. We can talk about this elaborately as soon as we receive the preamble decision and see what we can and cannot do.

As I said, students who enrolled to basic high schools have nothing to worry about. The entrepreneurs who opened basic high schools should not worry either. The Ministry of Education will support these institutions which cooperated with us in this process and transformed into basic high schools. Their future is bright and in the following years we will observe the contribution of these institutions in solving the problem of preparatory schools.

Graduated students benefited from these follow-up courses and will continue to benefit in the future. We will offer them these follow-up courses in public education centers.”

 

Follow-up courses are free of charge for everyone

“Whether you are graduated or still continuing your education in formal education institutions, these courses are free of charge for all participants. As these follow-up courses caused great competition for preparatory schools, some media instruments disseminated news about these courses that are not true. These courses, regardless of their subject or level, are free of charge.

 

Are there any differences between the basic high schools and private high schools?

“The curriculum is the same, only the class hours are less. In the process of transformation, we classified the institutions transforming into schools and we observed that some preparatory schools are qualified to transform into private schools… There are some criteria on the garden area, ladders, classrooms, laboratories, crafts rooms and so on that needs to be met to become a private school. We observed that some failed to meet the criteria. We offered them a 4 year plan of basic high school formula as a transition period to transform from preparatory schools to private schools while trying to meet the criteria. This formula was a commitment to meet the criteria in 4 years.

With these commitments 967 institutions are active while the applications of the 1293 others are being reviewed. Hence these institutions are permanent institutions. Majority of them, perhaps all of them, will meet the criteria and transform into standard private schools. I can safely say this from the remarks the representatives of the sector from our meetings; ‘It is the first time that we realize we are educators. It is the first time we enjoy it truly as we transformed from preparatory schools.’ In 4 years they will transform into private schools with the incentives they receive and the demand they have.”

 

Private school incentives

“The rate of school privatization in Turkey is far from OECD countries, it was around 2.3 percent in 2002. With regulations this increased to 5.2 percent; it will increase more in the following years… OECD average is 15 percent… What does school privatization bring about? School privatization means the sharing of the burden of the public schools by the private sector. There is a serious public demand for that. Hence we offered incentives of 2 thousand and 500 to 3 thousand and 500 varying according to stages to encourage entrepreneurs and parents with limited means who desire to send their children to private schools in each school stage of preschool, elementary school, secondary school, high school and basic high school. Last year we offered financial assistance to 167 thousand students. This year we plan to offer financial assistance to at least 180 thousand students.

For financial assistance we designate objective criteria varying from the income status of the parents, academic standing of the student, and how many children from the same family are currently continuing their education. Last year we planned to offer financial assistance to 250 thousand students, however only 167 thousand met the criteria. This year we plan to offer at least 180 thousand students from basic high schools, Anatolian and private Anatolian high schools, private science high schools, private secondary and elementary schools as well as private preschools, this number will be clarified in our meetings with the Ministry of Finance next week. Preschool students receive financial assistance of 2 thousand 500 liras while Anatolian high school students receive 3 thousand 500 liras but this might increase this year. The incentives will continue. Students receiving financial assistance will continue to receive it till they graduate, it is not granted only for a year; as long as they succeed in their studies they will receive the assistance until they graduate.

Additionally, last year the assistance was only offered to students transferring from public schools to private schools, now the students studying in private schools can also apply for financial assistance. It is no longer limited to students transferring from public schools to private schools. As long as they meet the criteria, they can receive financial assistance.”

 

Appointing of Preparatory school teachers to the Ministry of National Education staff

“With regards to the speculations about the decision of the Constitutional Court; we planned such opportunity of appointing the preparatory school teachers who became unemployed in the process of transformation, however if the court annulled this article, we might not be able to do anything about it.”

 

Is the Ministry of Education working on an education system without examinations?

“It is impossible to eliminate examinations completely. A system without examination is not possible but there is examination and there is ‘examination’. Our main priority is to change examinations from multiple choice format; even though we might still have multiple choice examinations, when it’s based on curriculum it eliminates the possibility students outranking one another solely due to their test skills. TEOG examination was the first application of such. TEOG is not a new examination; we annulled SBS examination and instead started examinations for 8th grade students on 6 subjects each semester controlled from the center. These examinations are based on national curriculum… This examination system based on what teachers instructed their students on class lowered the demand for preparatory schools among 8th grade students.

Once we distribute tablet computers to each student –perhaps in 3 or 4 years-, we will hold these examinations whenever we want and not only as a multiple choice examinations but in various formats. In that sense the project FATIH is a very important project. We have various plans and projects and ongoing pilot schemes for that and we hope to increase our work on that matter next term.”

 

Courts verdicts coming too late on the examinations

 “With the recent events on the legislation and debates on the decision of the Constitutional Court, it is important to note that: there is a highly used accusation about the Ministry of Education that it is ‘often being brought to court, fails to abide to court decisions…’ These accusations are often highlighted, especially about the cancellation of examinations or annulment of questions…

1 million 300 thousand children take examinations each year. It is not so unexpected to come across mistakes in these examinations. It is natural to take these matters to the court. Anyone who feels victimized, especially about the examinations can take the matter to the court.

However there is something we come across often both in the SBS examination and in the TEOG examination process: The examinations take place in April, May or June. We announce the results. After a while, say in July, parents bring a case to the court on a certain question in the exam. It takes a while for the court to investigate this matter. When the court investigates and announces its decision, 1 million 300 thousand children are already settled in their new schools, have taken examinations and are about to finish the semester.  This is something we came across very often; on September 11, 2014 we requested in the Parliament a speedy trial process for judicial matters on total or partial cancelation of examinations.

What is a speedy trial? It foresees speeding the trial process in cases where normal trial length may harm the involved parties. This speedy trial proposal was discussed in our commission and was approved by all the parties. It was later brought to the Parliament and the MPs understood our concerns about the public and it was accepted by the Parliament and went into law on September 11, 2014.

According to the law on speedy trial, the appeals to examinations by the Ministry of Education and ÖSYM (Student Selection and Placement Center) should be done in 10 days after the examination date. After the appeal, the court should start its investigation in 7 days; this process is followed by 3 days –if not enough, the court can offer 3 more days- given to the institution in question presenting its case. Once this process is done, the court has 15 days to come to a verdict. The judicial process is completed in 38 days. This process allows the Ministry to abide by the verdict and correct any wrong doing on time.   

Thus, this year to prevent anyone from being victimized, we calculated the process to be finalized in 38 days by taking into account the judicial process and even added additional days to be safe.

However one court announced annulment of one question in the English examination after 55 days, just as the preference process was beginning. Additionally there were 2 conflicting court decisions on the issue. Despite that, to prevent our students from feeling victimized, we abided to the court decision of annulment. We won’t defer from abiding to court verdicts, we would even prefer to do so. However it is crucial that the courts come to a decision within the time frame defined by the law, before our children register to their schools. I highlight this again in the light of recent information that there will be illegal attempts in the following TEOG examinations on August, September or October. I remind the courts again that we received information that there will be attempts to reopen cases in courts for TEOG examinations taking place on August, September or October during 2014-2015 Academic Year to create a chaotic environment. I would like to remind the court the legal time frame defined by the speedy trial law. We will take the matter legally or even apply to the Supreme Council of Judges in case of any unlawful activities. I am mentioning this as the current situation with the Constitutional Court is another example. If their verdict was announced in time, we would not be in such a problematic situation right now. The court annulled the request to a stay of execution 8 months after the case was brought into the court. This was received by the public as comments reflecting bias, it was reflected as so. This was the case for us too… That was the very same reason why I replied to the questions of whether we expected annulment decision from the Constitutional Court as no. The public, representatives of the sector, parents did not expected it either. Parents transferred their children to other institutions, the representatives of the sector participated in the transformation process. Thus, courts should come to a verdict by taking into account their late verdict especially on educational matters might have chaotic consequences for a wide range of groups. We are not object to court verdicts, as long as they are reached in the appropriate legal time frame. If a court comes to decision about an examination taking place on May after 8 months we won’t be able to make up for it in time. The legal community should care for the Ministry of National Education the same way the Ministry does for protecting and abiding by the law.

 

“The need of our children for preparatory school decreased dramatically”

“It is been said that ‘the transformation process of preparatory schools cannot be done solely by closing down these institutions!’ They claim that with the current system of examination, the need for preparatory schools will remain. We initiated the process of transformation for the wellbeing of our national economy, our children and for the improvement of our national education system. The current examination system will not remain the same; we already observed this with the TEOG examination. With TEOG, the need of our children for preparatory schools decreased dramatically as the curriculum, the school and the teachers became the main agents. One of the main harms of the preparatory school experience is that it undermines the contribution of our teachers. While preparing for examination, children attend both to their schools and preparatory schools, if they succeed in the exams it is attributed to their preparatory schools while their failures are attributed to their schools… This is unacceptable; it is not possible to evaluate the role of the testing skills they acquire in preparatory schools in their success. Additionally we know that only a few of children succeed due to additional education they receive in preparatory schools and others serve as a boost in the success of preparatory schools.”

“We will increase TEOG-like examination systems”

“Hence, we will increase TEOG-like examination applications.

This includes university entrance examinations. As a result of our meetings with ÖSYM, from next year onwards, teachers from secondary education system that is an integral part of our national curriculum will also take part in the commission that prepares these examination questions. This is crucial as, in previous years mainly the academicians were in charge of preparing the examination questions that were mainly compatible with the test techniques acquired in preparatory schools. This means that the weight of the national curriculum in these examinations will increase as well as the success of our students. So addition to the efforts of the academicians, the contribution of the teachers that participate within the secondary education system will be integral to eliminating the need for preparatory schools for preparing for examinations. As I said, apart from our national education, we also offer follow-up courses.”

 

“People also que for Harvard”

“Quotas for our universities increased highly in the last 10 years. Hence a huge majority of our graduates are placed in universities all over Turkey. However children might want to attend a certain university of their choice instead of others… Results they obtain might not allow them to attend to the department of their choice… Hence the examinations are not a race for students to attend to any university but rather a race for the candidates to attend to the university of their choice. Hence there might be huge demand for some universities while some will be relatively easy to attend to. Universities with high demands will be forced to eliminate some students. This is the case everywhere throughout the world, not everyone who wants to attend Harvard is admitted. Hence we need examinations. However it is important to prevent these examinations from becoming mechanized and causing our children to lose their ability to think analytically. Hence we develop projects like TEOG, offering follow-up courses, rearranging national curriculum and commission for the university entrance examinations to assess the abilities of our children also on their extracurricular activities on arts, cultural activities, sports and social events.”

 

Beware of the preparatory schools having illegal registrations

“We believe that –and we think that it will be confirmed once the preamble decision of the Constitutional Court is released- there will not be any institutions that can register students with the status of preparatory schools as an institution. They might transform into follow-up courses, private schools but we advise our parents not to rush into registering their children into preparatory schools. We warn them as their current status is ambiguous.

We already warned our provincial and district national education offices about the institutions having illegal registrations and this will be taken into account while taking these institutions’ applications for transformation into follow-up courses.

Once again I would like to summarize; our students, parents, entrepreneurs for private schooling and representatives of the sector should not worry, we will not allow our students to end up in a problematic situation. We will offer free of charge follow-up courses just as we offered follow-up courses to our students last year in our schools and public education centers. These courses will increase by number and by subjects. Basic high schools will also continue their activities. The real educators of the sector that worked in cooperation with us are aware of the situation and they have nothing to worry about.”

 

Transferring procedures

“Another issue I would like to mention is the transferring procedures; how will it work? Can the students that registered to the basic high schools turn back to their old schools or can they transfer from their schools to basic high schools?

Our transfer schedule is the following; for our students registering, the preference process will be finalized on August 14 and they will learn which school they can register to. If they desire to change the school they are registering to, the first transfer applications are between August 17 and 21.

The transferring requests will be ranked according to the scores our students obtain and the application process will be evaluated by August 24. For the students who are not able to transfer in the first application or for those wanting to transfer to schools with available quotes from the first application process can make use of the second transfer applications between August 24 and 28 that will be evaluated by August 31. Finally the third transfer application will be between August 31 and September 4 that will be evaluated by September 7. With three transfer applications, we will finalize the transferring process before the beginning of the semester. Apart from these, we will evaluate transferring applications due to reassigning of parents, moving to another city or other reasons by the last week of each month. But for the students registering for the first time, we offer 3 transferring opportunities. Last year we had problems with the transferring process as they conflicted with the registration dates, we would like to apologize to those parents who encountered problems last year. This year, to prevent same problems arising, we scheduled transferring process to be finalized before September 14, the beginning of the 2015-2016 academic year. We hope this academic year will begin without any problem for our children.”

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