Teachers Want the Mentality to Change

The Education and Science Workers' Union (Egitim-Sen), which represents some 200,000 thousand educators, met with the National Education Minster Huseyin Celik on August 14, and presented him a report on "The Structural Problems of Our Education System and Proposals to Solve the Problem."

According to the report, the National Education Ministry (MEB) changed the education system in accordance with the European Union (EU) criteria. However, in European countries, there are only 25 students per classroom and more than 10 percent of the budget is allocated to education.

In Turkey, while the number of students doubled in the last 15 years, the amount allocated for education dropped from 16 percent to 8.4 percent. There are an average of 60 students per classroom in the elementary school level.

The union argues that the recent reforms in the education system do not solve the problems. It advocates that the government's mentality on education has to change for the solution of the problems. Among problems are the facts that one million children do not go to school and that there is a very high level of failure in entrance examinations for high schools and universities.

There is a shortage of 96 thousand teachers

The educators prepared the 50-page report in one year, taking as a basis the data from MEB. According to the report, which will be presented at the Democratic Education Congress in December 2004, there is a shortage of 3 thousand schools, 100,000 classrooms and 106 thousand teachers in Turkey. According to MEB figures, there is a shortage of 96, 381 teachers. Only 18 thousand teachers were appointed during the semester 2004-05.

In the report, Egitim-Sen proposed that compulsory education is brought up to nine years, and students attend to middle schools where technical education is also provided, so that they can discover what their skills are.

The union said that there are 2,500 students per advisor, and added that the current advising system should be improved so that students can receive an education where they can discover themselves and are able to take up different subjects.

The educators said despite the reform, the content of schoolbooks was still discriminatory based on race, religion, origin and sexuality.

In 8, 325 schools, there are double classes, and in 17,636 schools classes are joined, according to the report.

Egitim-Sen said that teachers were still punished or sent on exile and underlined the fact that teachers' salary is 650 million Turkish lira (USD 433). The poverty limit is 1.5 billion Turkish lira (USD 1,000).

Other criticisms and proposals of the report are below:

* There are a total of 10 million and 10 thousand students in elementary schools in Turkey. There are 35,502 schools and 267,241 classrooms. A total of 646,000 students especially in the provinces of Urfa, Samsun and Erzurum, receive education in joined classrooms.

* There are an average 60 students per classroom in Istanbul, Diyarbakir and Sanliurfa. There are 2,512 students per advisor. In middle schools, there are an average 43 students per classroom.

* Research revealed that 70 percent of teachers, students and parents, believe there is no equality of opportunities in education and think the education system is undemocratic.

* One in every two families are violent against their children. Forty percent of children are beaten at school. Out of 13 million and 200 thousand children between the ages of five and 14, 1 million and 8 work in agriculture, services, industry and trade. (OG/EU/EA/(YE)