Vocational education which was reinforced as a result of investments aiming at increasing its production capacity, has been producing many urgently needed products varying from masks to disinfectants, from disposal aprons and overalls to face shields since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

 

Vocational high schools also successfully produced many machines and devices such as ventilators to mask machines and were exported upon demand. Within this framework, 6 different vocational and technical high schools made exports to six different countries for the first time in their history.

 

An important step concerning patent, useful model, design, brand production and registration was taken up by vocational education and the Ministry has founded 43 R&D centers in schools. In 2020, vocational high schools registered a total of 188 productions including 12 patents, 8 useful models, 109 designs and 59 brand registration. In 2021, it is aimed to register 250 patents, useful models, designs and brand registrations.

 

While production and innovation capacity of vocational education was reinforced, the Ministry has taken a new step about vocational education.

 

From now on, experiment sets which are largely required in vocational education will be produced in vocational high schools. Within this framework, selected vocational high schools with strong infrastructure started to produce experiment sets. Experiment sets used in 8 different areas namely electric-electronic, industrial automation, machinery, informatics, renewable energy, fashion design, metal technologies and plane maintenance are already produced by these schools.

 

Moreover, these schools managed to produce electronic training sets, automatic controller training sets, PLC training sets, remote energy monitor and control experiment sets, electricity wiring training sets, compensation training sets, robotic coding teachers' training sets, 3-D printer, industrial automation training sets, pneumatic- electro pneumatic training setss, industrial control and fault analyses training sets.

 

The schools also produced CNC plasma cutter, arduino training sets, digital electronic training sets, factory automation training sets, PLC training sets and control training sets in the field of industrial automation technologies.

 

In the machine technology field, schools produced CNC training sets, mini desktop 3 axis CNC, gear wheel training set and CNC laser cut (metal).

 

In informatics technologies field, schools produced robotic coding experiment sets. Selected schools also produced renewable energy experiment sets in renewable energy field and sewing machine training sets in fashion design field. Moreover, they produced CNC plasma cutting machine in metal technology field and plan fuel system training sets in the plan maintenance field. Experiment set productions are carried out in a  total of 27 vocational high schools in 10 cities namely; one school in Afyon, three schools in Ankara, one school in  Balıkesir, five schools in Bursa, one school in Denizli,  3 schools in Hatay, eight schools in İstanbul, two schools in İzmir, one school in Kocaeli and two schools in Tekirdağ.

 

Deputy Minister Mahmut Özer expressed his happiness to see that steps taken for the reinforcement of education-production-employment cycle is yielding results.

 

Noting that support given to vocational schools since the end of 2018 in an effort to increase the capacity and variety of production of these schools Özer said, "Income earned in the last two years increased by 100 percent when compared to the figures of 2018 and reached 500 million liras.  This increase was achieved despite the hard and restrictive conditions that occurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This shows that we have a great potential."

 

Özer stressed that for the first time in their history, vocational high schools started to export their products to other countries and went on to say: "Now, we based our production capacity on the reinforcement of our workshops as it has a direct impact on the quality of vocational education. We started to produce workshop experiment sets in the schools selected by the Directorate General for Vocational and Technical Education. From now on, we will respond the demand for experiment sets of vocational high schools from our own production. We are aiming at increasing the variety and number of experiment sets within a few months."