Remote learning widens educational gap between Turkey’s rich, poor

More than 30% of Turkey’s K-12 students are at risk of falling behind in their education due to a lack of resources and infrastructural difficulties while public primary and secondary education in the country relies heavily on remote learning. Many parents who consider the spring semester a lost term are hopeless about fall semester as well. 

Turkey has expanded in-person education for primary and secondary school students on Monday, with second, third, fourth, eighth and 12th graders going back to school on a rotation basis. Still, millions of students are dependent on remote education as part of efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. In the seven months since the closure of the schools in March, the government seems to have failed to take necessary steps to secure education for those who don't have the means and resources to access online and remote learning, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas where even electricity can sometimes be a problem, let alone internet or television access. 

The fall semester got off to a bad start in late September, when the online educational portal known as EBA collapsed in the first week of the online courses. Though the government said the crash was due to a cyber attack, many observers argued that the real reason was the high traffic. Aside from infrastructure failures, opposition parties and civic groups also say millions of students have effectively been left out of education by high internet fees or a lack of televisions, computers and internet access.

According to a recent report by Turkey’s main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), some four million students could not access the remote learning system due to a lack of resources in the first week of the fall semester. While 3.5 million students have been having difficulty accessing the internet, some 750,000 do not even have televisions in their houses.