What Does The PISA 2003 Mean For Turkey?

What Does The PISA 2003 Mean For Turkey? ~ After founding the country (1923), Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, closed down the secular and religious ruling institutions of the Ottoman Empire and focused on setting up a new country, adopting Westernizing values. He started the contemporary Turkish education system in 1924 by closing the religious schools and setting up new secular schools. In addition, he made elementary school attendance compulsory, accepted the Roman alphabet instead of Arabic script, separated state and religious affairs, established a secular legal system along the lines of European countries instead of an Islamic legal system, established civil rights and provided for equal rights for women. His reforms between 1924 and 1934 constituted the ideological base of modern Turkey (Turkish Ministry of National Education, 2002).

Before the Republic, there were three kinds of schools. One group was made up of district schools and madras. They taught the Koran, and the Arabic language. The second were made up of reform schools and high schools supporting innovation. The third group was made up of colleges and minority schools with foreign language education. These three ‘systems’ of schools were educating individuals in three different ways, serving different groups with different life styles and view points. Under these educational conditions, it was not possible to forge national unity and social cohesion. On March 3rd 1924, the ‘Law of Integration of Education’ no 430 was issued to integrate these schools and to take the education under state control. With this law, the democratization and secularism of the education system was started (Turkish Ministry of National Education, 2002).

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