Education in Turkey

Education in Turkey is governed by a national system which was established in accordance with the Atatürk Reforms after the Turkish War of Independence. It is a state-supervised system designed to produce a skillful professional class for the social and economic institutes of the nation.

Compulsory education lasts 12 years. Primary and secondary education is financed by the state and free of charge in public schools, between the ages of 6 and 18, and by 2001 enrollment of children in this age range was nearly 100%. Secondary or high school education is mandatory but required in order to then progress to universities. By 2011 there were 166 universities in Turkey. Except for the Open Education Faculty (Turkish: Açıköğretim Fakültesi) at Anadolu University, entrance is regulated by a national examination, ÖSYS, after which high school graduates are assigned to university according to their performance.

In 2002, the total expenditure on education in Turkey amounted to $13.4 billion, including the state budget allocated through the National Ministry of Education and private and international funds.

On November 22, 2010, the government initiated the Fatih project which seeks to integrate state-of-the-art computer technology into Turkey's public education system.

After the foundation of the Turkish republic the organization of the Ministry of Education gradually developed and was reorganized with the Law no 2287 issued in 1933. The Ministry changed its names several times. It fell under the Ministry of Culture (1935–1941 and was named Ministry of National Education, Youth, and Sports (1983–1989). Since then it is called the Ministry of National Education. Before the Republic, education institutions were far from having a national character. Schools were organized in three separate channels which were vertical institutions independent of each other. The first and the most common in this organization were the district schools and madrasas based on the teaching of the Quran the Arabian language and memorizing, the second were the Reform schools and high schools supporting innovation and the third were the colleges and minority schools with foreign language education.

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Wikipedia