‘EU membership just a dream with this education system’

    The results of this year's university admission examination, known as the Student Selection Examination (ÖSS), led him to this conclusion. He is not alone; many experts told Sunday's Zaman that the ÖSS results openly show the need for urgent and radical reform of education.

    This year saw 1,324,000 students take the exam. They answered the same questions at the same time, but 30,000 of them scored no points. Sixty percent skipped the science questions and 251,000 were unable to answer even one single math question. Only 8,655 students answered all the math questions correctly.

    Compared to last year's exam results, the overall success on the Turkish language section fell by four points, with 1,281 students getting every question right on the section. Only 133 students answered every single question correctly in the social sciences section and 140 in the science section.

But despite these results, nearly 93 percent of the test takers earned the right to fill out preference forms for university placement. This is because the capacity of universities increased this year. Despite all this, only 163,640 students earned the right to chose among any university program they wish to pursue; for the rest, the computers will decide.

“In the math section, which has 30 questions, the average number of correct answers is just nine. This is very alarming,” Altan underlined.

‘Education system has many inequalities’

According to experts there are many reasons for this failure, but the main one is social injustice.

“A system was created in which the poor have no chance to study. How can a student from a big city and another one from Ağrı take the same exam without having the same educational opportunities? This is very unfair to the student from Ağrı,” Selçuk Pehlivanoğlu, the chairman of the Turkish Education Association (TED), said.

He underlined that students who have money are able to take private courses, attend private support centers and graduate from private schools. This in turn makes them more successful than students from poor areas. “The students, from primary school all the way through the end of secondary education, are in the hands of material interest groups,” he said, referring to private support courses.

Kıvanç Eliaçık, the leader of the Youth Student Union (Genç-Sen), which is facing a closure case following a claim that students cannot unionize, underlines that the ÖSS does not care how much you know, but how much more you know than others. “In such a system, the biggest factor influencing whether you pass or not is your family's financial situation. It is impossible to be successful in the exam without attending private courses and supportive education centers, both of which cost several thousand lira -- all this at a time when the minimum wage is only TL 589.50.”

Private Courses Union (ÖZ-DE-BİR) President Faruk Köprülü did not want to comment on the results of the ÖSS nor their role in education.

Regional differences visible in ÖSS results

Like Pehlivanoğlu, education expert and Education Personnel Union (Eğitim-Sen) Secretary-General Zübeyde Kılıç underlined the role regional differences play in the ÖSS.

She notes that the most successful students are from the western parts of the country and metropolitan cities like İstanbul, İzmir, Kayseri and Bursa. “Most of the students who get zero points are from the eastern provinces. That aside, more than half of the successful students are graduates of private schools,” she said, adding that most of the unsuccessful students are from vocational schools.

Kılıç added that the commercialization of education is making the inequalities worse and that education should be seen as a right of citizens. “It is not possible to discuss the results of the ÖSS independently of the existing situation of the educational system in Turkey,” she said.

Genç-Sen's Eliaçık also underlined the urgent need for educational reform aimed at removing inequalities. “Everyone's right to education should be secured by the state. This is the only way,” Eliaçık said.

Pehlivanoğlu believes that if Turkey carries out real reform in more than 10 years, it might be too late since, after 10 years, the average age of the country's population will be higher. For him, such a reform should include the principle of universities selecting their own students.

“If we are unable to do it, it will be better to close all high schools and instead give students more time to attend private support courses,” he said.

Altan underlined the importance of teachers in the secondary education system. He said that Turkish teachers are not like their European counterparts, who are middle class intellectuals. “In Turkey, teachers are civil servants whose information about what they teach is frozen in the year they learned it. The teachers are unable to follow developments in their own field,” he said.

Altan underlined that Turkey needs a new economic development program, one that is only possible if there is a new education program. “Turkey has not been able to succeed with its current education program, one developed in an already outdated industrial era. How then will it implement a new education program? One thing is for sure, however: With this education system, the EU is just a dream.”