President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during his speech at the Collective Opening Ceremony of Education Premises of Ankara Governor's Office organized at the Beştepe National Congress and Culture Center that, "Today, we are opening 326 education and training institutions during a single ceremony. If you paid attention, I didn't just say education. It is because I want to focus on training, too. When we talk about labs, we think of training but when talk about books, we think of education."

 

Erdoğan stressed that, "We have demolished a total of 88 schools which were detected as non-earthquake resistant and built new schools. Total of available classrooms in Ankara increased to 49 thousand and 700 with new editions. With the opening of new schools, total of schools in Ankara which is earmarked for a single grade will rise to 95 percent."

 

President Erdoğan said, "In the last 18 years, we had allocated the lion's share of the government budget to education. The budget of national education which was only 7.5 billion liras in 2002 increased to 147 billion in 2021. If we also consider the budget allocated for higher education, the total education budget of our country exceeds 211 billion liras. Similarly, 18 years ago, the number of schools and education institutions including the private schools were 50 thousand and 877 and this figure rose to 87 thousand and 640. Number of classrooms increased to 600 thousand from 343 thousand in the last 18 years."

 

Erdoğan stated during his speech that, "Turkey is among the most developed and rapidly renovating countries of the World in terms of education infrastructure in the last 18 years. We were monitoring the education and training conditions of other countries with envy in the past but now many countries are taking our education and training activities as an example".

 

Erdoğan went on to say that, "667 thousand children in villages are taking school buses instead of walking for hours to go to their schools. We have provided support, scholarships and student loans for students who once could not go to school and made their dreams come true."

 

Stating that the Ministry of National Education is working with its entire power to build libraries and labs in the district schools, Erdoğan said, "We are providing education services with a total of 29 thousand libraries all over the country and 2 thousand and 750 digital libraries. Turkey is among the most developing and rapidly renovating countries of the World in terms of education infrastructure in the last 18 years and many countries are taking us as an example."

 

Erdoğan stated that Turkey had the opportunity to reap the fruits of its investments in the fields of health and education during this process adding that: "Despite the difficulties occurred due to the pandemic, we are among a few countries that was able to give uninterrupted education services. We have delivered a total of 2 million tablet computers to students until now and 675 thousand of these tablets were distributed during the pandemic. During this period, we also managed to carry out successful distance education activities through EBA television and internet platforms. We prepared more than 10 thousand lesson contents in 13 television studios. We achieved to make 3 million live lessons every day by using EBA Live Classroom application. EBA internet platform offers more than 1900 lessons and hundreds of thousands of contents to students and teachers. This platform managed to become the most visited education website in the world in 2020."

 

Stressing that he is aware that nothing can take the place of face to face education and they aim at opening face to face education depending on the number of coronavirus patients in the country, Erdoğan went on to say: "Face to face education began in village schools and independent preschools on February 15. We are working in an effort to bring teachers and students together as soon as possible. Until that day, I ask from you to obey hygiene, mask and social distance rules."

 

Minister of National Education Ziya Selçuk said during the opening, "We have made 326 investments for education in Ankara between 2019-2020. We expect that these investments will increase in the quality of education."

 

Noting that despite the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, this process provide an opportunity for new projects, Selçuk stressed that the pandemic urged people to reconsider the meaning of "education" and "school" concepts and resulted in closer cooperation between the school administrations, teachers and parents.

 

Minister Selçuk went on to say: "As a stage of life, school is an institution that adds value to the existing values of every single child, increases their happiness and decorates children with universal, national and moral values and teaches life skills. In line with this mentality, we will continue to work in an effort to improve the conditions and environments of our schools.

 

Following the end of the speech of Minister Selçuk, the ceremony continued with the online opening of schools.