Erdogan’s 'pious generation' curriculum gets failing grade
The Turkish government is struggling just to generate Band-Aid solutions for deep-rooted education problems.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently rejected the use of a high school entrance exam his own party introduced with great fanfare just a few years ago. Now a new version has been launched, to a much less enthusiastic reception.
During a live TV interview Sept. 16, Erdogan said, “The high school entrance exam [commonly known by the acronym TEOG in Turkish] must be abolished. I don't want that system. It will be abolished now.” Ironically, it was Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) that introduced the TEOG exam in the 2013-2014 school year.
TEOG was advertised with the promise that it would advance high school education and help promote the spread of Imam Hatip (religious) high schools (IHL). During that school year, the percentage of IHLs did increase, to 19.9%, up from 11.8%.
This year, on Nov. 5, a new entrance system was unveiled. Oddly, the new system resembles the one used before the AKP’s TEOG. Students wishing to qualify for the top schools will have to take the entrance exam, and only 300,000 are expected to be accepted, according to Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz. To put that into perspective, 1.2 million students will graduate from eighth grade in 2018. Yilmaz’s words caused an uproar among Turkish parents.
