Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer stated during his speech during the protocol signing ceremony that vocational and technical education is among the priority issues of his Ministry.
Reminding that the vocational education in the country suffered problems in 1999 when graduates of vocational and imam hatip schools were not allowed to enroll in universities, Özer noted that after the lift of this ban in 2010s, all ministries and bureaucrats worked in an effort to reinforce vocational education.
"Most crucial decision was the change in the management approach. We have included business world actors to all vocational education processes. We have founded cooperation in order to update the curriculum of vocational and technical schools in order to respond to the needs of the labor market. We also injected technological and recent developments to education," said Minister Özer.
Özer stated that recent developments and ongoing projects gave results and academically successful students started to prefer to study in vocational and technical schools.
"Today, we are taking another important step in cooperation with the Yıldız Technical University. From now on, we will jointly carry out the education-training process of Maçka Vocational and Technical Anatolia High School," said Minister Özer.
The Ministry aims at increasing the production capacity of vocational high schools to 1.5 billion liras this year
Özer noted that the production and corporate capacity of vocational education witnessed an important increase in the last two years adding that, "Actually, it began with production capacity. We want students to learn while producing, increase the employment rate of graduates and allow them to take a share from the revenue."
Minister Özer stated that vocational high schools earned 1 billion 162 million liras from their production in 2021 and they are aiming at increasing the production capacity of vocational high schools to 1.5 billion liras this year.
The Ministry also founded R&D centers at the vocational high schools in an effort to reinforce their corporate capacity. Every year, these schools register more than 200 patents, useful models, brands and designs.