President Erdoğan: We have been taking historic steps to ensure equal opportunities and raise quality in education
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered a speech at the Transforming Education Summit during his visit to New York for the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Thanking Secretary General Antonio Guterres of the UN for his future-oriented vision paper, President Erdoğan said: “The fundamental element that upholds nations, leads change and adds value to the world is education. The ideal of ‘strong society, strong country’ can only be achieved if human capital is utilized well, is put through an education process of high quality. We are a country that offers free of charge all level of education, from kindergarten to university, to our children. For the past 20 years, we have been taking steps of historic nature to make education more accessible, to ensure equal opportunities and raise quality in education.”
Highlighting the administration’s efforts to strengthen the educational infrastructure in Türkiye, President Erdoğan said: “We have equipped our educational institutions with gyms, digital libraries, laboratories, and smart boards and introduced modern means. We have increased the rate of schooling in our country by increasing the mandatory education up to 12 years following the 4+4+4 educational reform. With our ‘Come On Girls, Let’s Go To School’ project, we have encouraged our female students’ education and raised the rate of schooling up to over 90 percent. Thanks to our pre-school educational mobilization, we have increased the schooling rate of our 5-year-old children from 78 percent up to 93 percent. We aim to raise this number to 100 percent in the period ahead.”
“WE UPDATE OUR CURRICULUM ACCORDING TO TODAY’S NEEDS”
Underscoring the importance of vocational training, President Erdoğan said: “With our approach of learning by producing, we are establishing close cooperation between our vocational training institutions and industrial areas. With the aim of sharing with other countries our experience on vocational and technical training, we have established International Vocational and Technical Anatolian High Schools. Our Türkiye Maarif Foundation fills and important gap with its educational institutions across 49 countries, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Balkans. The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency is providing less developed and developing countries with education and technical training support. Through Türkiye Scholarships, we are offering free education opportunities to thousands of different students at various levels in our country.”
President Erdoğan ended his remarks as follows: “We value the children of over 4 million refugees we host in our country as much as our own children and we spare no effort for their education. In addition to our international efforts, we update and renew our curriculum according to today’s needs.”
