Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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TECs) 169,121 Syrian children under Temporary Protection and 24,322 Iraqi children are being
educated making in total 193,503 students trained in Turkish curriculum. Additionally, in 404
temporary training centres in 20 provinces, 291,039 students, all of whom are from Syria, are
trained in intensive Turkish teaching. Overall 59% of Syrian students are enrolled in schools in
Turkey.
Children of seasonal workers
There are a large number of people who work as seasonal workers in Turkey and because of this
temporarily move out of their residence. Most seasonal workers leave their homes in spring and
come back by the end of autumn. Due to this temporary change in location of residence, children
of seasonal workers may miss school. With its serious commitment to provide all children equal
opportunities for education, the MoNE recently introduced a public notice named “Children of
seasonal agriculture workers and semi-nomadic families’ access to school”.330 According to this
notice, in the provinces which these workers immigrate to and emigrate from, 3 teachers in every
province will team up to track these children’s attendance in schools. To facilitate this process,
there is an e-school system by which these students’ information is also transferred to the new
school that they are temporarily attending. In this way, these children’s attendance and academic
records become easily trackable. Since these measures have only recently begun to be
implemented there is a lack of data on their effects.
Conclusion
In the last fifteen years Turkey has made significant progress in improving access to education for
all groups of children. With the law no. 4306 enacted in 1997 8 years of basic education became
compulsory, and this accelerated girls’ enrolment in formal education. In the following years, with
the law no. 6287 (enacted in 2012), compulsory education is extended to 12 years. These
regulations have been translated into a substantial increase in enrolments in upper secondary
education in the last 15 years.
While challenges remain, especially in learning outcomes, the strategic plans and projects are
promising. MoNE’s strategic plan documents indicate that the Ministry identified the main
problems and defined concrete targets and plans. The system established for schooling of special
needs children stands out as a good example. With the involvement of other government
institutions, and the legislations stating that compulsory education starts from 36 months
onwards for special need children, better coverage and higher chances of inclusion may be on the
horizon. With nationwide programmes for girls’ education, bussed education for students living
far from schools, and conditional cash transfers towards financially vulnerable households,
Turkey tries to eliminate wealth related inequalities in education. On top of these, Turkey is in the
progress of instalment of education technologies via tablets distributed to students from 5th grade
onwards and interactive boards in all classrooms. With the aim of increasing quality education in
330 Ministry of National Education Directorate of Basic Education (2016)