The Turkish government has removed the Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG) exam, continuing to pave the way for Islamic schools with arbitrary changes to the education system following President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s orders.
Following Erdoğan’s comment "There was no such system during my childhood", the TEOG exam has been removed from the education system, leading to the sixth major change of the system in the 15 years of AKP rule. The president of the Labor Union of the Laborers of Education and Science (Eğitim-İş) responded to the change by saying that the substitute system would render Islamic imam-hatip schools obligatory for thousands of students and favouritism would rule.
The Turkish education system, which was shaken by exam-cheating scandals and altered to feature a reactionary curriculum during the last few years, has again undergone an abrupt and important change affecting the future of millions of pupils. The Ministry of National Education removed the centralised high school entrance exam following Erdoğan’s orders.
Millions of pupils and their parents have been left in the dark about the substitute system. The Ministry asserts that the new system will be residency based and every high school in Turkey will organise its entrance exam.
Orhan Yıldırım, the President of the Labor Union of the Laborers of Education and Science (Eğitim-İş), stated in an interview with soL that this last change has been the sixth major change made during AKP rule since 2002. "They influence the lives of children through such unserious and unstudied steps," he said, referring to the AKP.
President Yıldırım said that the new system would promote private schools. According to his statement, parents will send their children to private schools during primary and middle school, so that the children may receive higher grades and continue in better high schools. The children of the poor, however, will not have this same opportunity. This will be the result of the new system, according to Yıldırım.
The president of the educators' union also underlined the economic and geographic inequalities that the new system will bring a lack. "How can a child in the backwaters of Anatolia be able to afford to come and take the examination of a high school in İstanbul?" he asks.
He also mentioned that the AKP government has opened Islamic schools everywhere and noted that there are several areas in Turkey in which these schools are the only option for prospective students. The government has been trying to increase the number of children enrolled in these schools through unconstitutional regulations and financial promotions.
