Schools fail girls in Turkey’s Southeast
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Hürriyet Daily News
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 25, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - Girls who live in rural areas or in southeastern Anatolia and have parents with low education levels are the most disadvantaged group in Turkey in terms of access to education, according to a new report called "Inequality in Education."
"We should remove the inequality in education to solve general inequality problems in society," said Professor Üstün Ergüder, director of the Education Reform Initiative, or ERG, a group under Sabancı University, which released the report in a press conference in Istanbul yesterday.
Stable and sustainable state policies should be supported by determined political and bureaucratic powers, he said. ERG’s suggestion was to prioritize preschool among disadvantaged kids.
Preschool education makes a difference in students, said Ergüder.
The girls’ education levels differed from region to region. The attendance rate for girls living in southeastern Anatolia was 50 percent lower than the rate for girls living in Istanbul, according to the report.
The rate of primary school attendance for girls living in rural areas in southeastern Anatolia was between 48 and 52 percent, according to the report. This rate dropped to 2 to 1 percent when the girls reached high school.
Socioeconomic inequality is the most common reason for inequality in education, said Batuhan Aydagül, vice coordinator of ERG. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children mostly attend regular and vocational high schools, where the quality of the education is lower compared to private high schools, said Aydagül. The budget allocated to education by the state is low in Turkey and the investment in education is mostly financed by parents, said Aydagül.
"The opportunity to attend university is highly parallel to the socioeconomic background and the money paid by the parents for the education," said Aydagül. "If one cannot enter a good high school, the state does not provide them a good education in regular high schools."
Although poverty is one of the main reasons impacting attendance in school, its affect on girls and boys differs. The rate of girls’ attendance to primary school is 21 percent lower than the rate of boys’ attendance. That shows that girls’ attendance is also impacted by gender inequality, which is strong in some regions.
The report was based on two studies, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD’s, Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, survey done in Turkey in 2006 and Turkey’s Statistical Institute, or TUİK, 2003 statistics.
Stable and sustainable state policies should be supported by determined political and bureaucratic powers, he said. ERG’s suggestion was to prioritize preschool among disadvantaged kids.
Preschool education makes a difference in students, said Ergüder.
The girls’ education levels differed from region to region. The attendance rate for girls living in southeastern Anatolia was 50 percent lower than the rate for girls living in Istanbul, according to the report.
The rate of primary school attendance for girls living in rural areas in southeastern Anatolia was between 48 and 52 percent, according to the report. This rate dropped to 2 to 1 percent when the girls reached high school.
Socioeconomic inequality is the most common reason for inequality in education, said Batuhan Aydagül, vice coordinator of ERG. Socioeconomically disadvantaged children mostly attend regular and vocational high schools, where the quality of the education is lower compared to private high schools, said Aydagül. The budget allocated to education by the state is low in Turkey and the investment in education is mostly financed by parents, said Aydagül.
"The opportunity to attend university is highly parallel to the socioeconomic background and the money paid by the parents for the education," said Aydagül. "If one cannot enter a good high school, the state does not provide them a good education in regular high schools."
Although poverty is one of the main reasons impacting attendance in school, its affect on girls and boys differs. The rate of girls’ attendance to primary school is 21 percent lower than the rate of boys’ attendance. That shows that girls’ attendance is also impacted by gender inequality, which is strong in some regions.
The report was based on two studies, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD’s, Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, survey done in Turkey in 2006 and Turkey’s Statistical Institute, or TUİK, 2003 statistics.