Educational controversies

This time, the prime minister's target is the prep schools, known as dershanes, which prepare students for highly competitive entrance exams.

Because of the government's determination to close down prep schools without first raising the quality of education in state schools, its plans are meeting fierce resistance. This is a multi-layered issue that has been reduced to a black and white debate "for" or "against" dershanes because of the government's uncompromising attitude. Many shades of greys, and the key issue, which is how to equip Turkey with a child-focused education system that produces outcomes in line with the country's future economic needs, have been lost in the fog of polemic.

Dershanes serve a purpose in the context of a very competitive school system where places in the best high schools and in universities are limited. As the Education Reform Initiative (ERI) just pointed out in a new publication, households spend a significant share of their resources on prep schools and private lessons because of a widespread belief that what children are taught in schools is insufficient to gain access to the best schools and to university. Empirical data suggests dershane attendance is currently one factor of success.

Until Turkey has either improved quality in its schools nationwide to such an extent that being accepted into specific schools is no longer seen as crucial, or it has shifted to a selection system that does not rely on competitive exams, parents will continue to invest in some form of external tutoring to improve their children's chances.

Turkey's education system has seen significant improvements in the past decade, but deep inequalities persist in the system. As the World Bank pointed out in a 2011 report, when private expenditures are considered, on top of what the state spends on education, a significant amount is actually invested on each student on average. Yet, 15-year-old Turkish students were two school years behind their Hungarian peers, who benefited from a similar per capital investment.

The World Bank wrote this year that a quarter of Turkish 15-year-olds have poor reading and writing skills, and are therefore considered "functionally illiterate." According to the Education Reform Initiative (ERI) of Sabancı University, close to a quarter of fourth and eighth grade Turkish students hadn't acquired basic skills according to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2011. PISA tests also they reveal wide disparities between top Turkish students, who outperform their international peers, while many others lag well below international averages.

Given that the share of private contributions to education is higher in Turkey than in other countries, even though 97 percent of primary and secondary students attend state schools, there is certainly ground to discuss if Turkey meets its constitutional duty to offer free education, how the country can further improve the quality of education, how it can reduce social and academic segregation in education and help more low-income students gain access to good schools.

But this is a discussion that has to involve all stakeholders. Answers cannot be produced by government advisors making quick decisions motivated more by political factors than the best interests of the next generation. Nor should the government rush to sail into unchartered waters without first studying maps produced by countries that have achieved good results.

Fruitless controversies creating unnecessary divisions are diverting energy that would be better spent harnessing the power of the public and private sectors, as well as civil society, to ensure that Turkish children benefit from the kind of education that will help them meet the challenge of global competitiveness and improve their well-being. This is surely an important goal that all the people and groups involved in education should be able to unite behind.