INEQUALITY

OF OPPORTUNITIES

IN EDUCATION

IN TURKEY

 

AUTHORS

 MEBRUKE OMUR

DAMLA ABAY

MERVE YURTTAS

ESRA CAKMAK

BELKIS SENGUL

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Equality of opportunities in education means that all people in a society have the chance of getting benefit of the education service without any discrimination in order to develop their potentials in the most proper way. In many contries in the world, there are no more important problems in terms of equal opportunities in education. However, this can not demonstrate us that equality of opportunities have been fully achieved. So as to achieve this goal, it is not sufficient to have the right to get equal opportunities by law. People also should have opportunities to use this right. Being not able to benefit from these opportunities leads to unequality in educational opportunity. In order to provide the equality of education, providing the individual with monetary opportunities is obligatory. In other words, these opportunities must be wanted from the state by individuals.

Before mentioning about the main factors of inequality of opportunities in education, we want to give some examples of conditions in Turkey, which result from inequality in educational opportunities, they wil be the following:

·       The tendency of being fired from the school or of repetition of a grade is more, for the students who attend to town primary schools than the students who attend to city primary schools.

·       Graduates of secondary schools in the east regions of the country are less successful than graduates of secondary schools in the west regions of the country.

·       The rate of schooling for girls is low in many cities and there are big inequalities in some parts of the country, in terms of education of girls.

·       Urban population, boys and developed regions and provinces benefit from education services more than rural population, girls and underdeveloped regions and provinces.

 

However, what are the main reasons of inequal opportunities in education?

 

THE MAIN FACTORS OF INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITIES IN EDUCATION

1.     Economic Factors: The unbalanced distribution of income in society will lead to the differencies among people regarding to getting benefit of education services.

turkey-mapIn Turkey, the very unbalanced distribution of income is known by people. This unbalanced distribution is such that the richest part of the public which makes %20 of the population shares %55 of the national income. On the other hand, the poorest part of the public which again makes %20 of the population shares only %5 of the national income.

1.     Goegraphical Factors: Geographical factors causing unequality of opportunities in education are related to two kinds of differences:

a)     The difference between cities and villages,

b)     The difference between geographical regions.

In Turkey, it is clear fact that there is difference regarding equal opportunities in education between cities and villages. Living in a village means that childen of villagers will get education which is not suitable in terms of both quantity and quality. This means that in villages, sometimes there are not enough schools, there sometimes are not proper conditions to attend classes and such as.

Morover, there is great difference in this matter between the western and eastern part of the country. Education service is not sufficient and satisfying in the East-Anatolian Region in terms of quantity and quality. In this region, sometimes teachers are not that qualified; there are not enough schools; there are not enough educational materials and cultural background is not suitable to appreciate education. Apart from the cultural background, the other cases such as insufficient schools are the conclusion of government’s failure to fulfill its duty in this matter.

2.     Social Factors: Social factors consist of; gender discrimination, religion discrimination, problems of language, ethnical groups, population and teacher matters.

In Turkey, despite a great importance has been put on the education of women after the establishment of Turkish Rpublic, the rate of woman’s attending schools is still lower than men’s.

When it comes to the problems of language, people whose mother tongue is Kurdish can be a very good example to make the issue clear: The child who speaks in Kurdish language with his/her family and relatives, will get education at school in Turkish and he/she will have to speak in Turkish language with the teacher. Therefore, the child will have difficulties in understanding the lessons. The child will not be able to speak in Turkish properly until he/she gaduates from primary school. It is clear that this situation will cause inequality of opportunity for that child when compared to the other children whose mother tongue is Turkish. Because, those other children will be in the level of abstract information after graduating primary school; however, the level of the Kurdish child will only consist of speaking properly after graduating from primary school. This situation will lead to the child’s failure in his/her further education.

            In Turkey, the speed of population growth is quite high, on the other hand the education service does not keep pace with this high population growth. As a consequence, the number of students will get higher and higher and the classrooms will get more and more crowded. The students who attend to such crowded classrooms will get education which has low quality. This will also lead to inequality of opportunities to get proper eduation.

            The last case in social factors is teacher matters. In Turkey, when there is a problem regarding the low quantities of teachers, the countrysides and eastern cities will get the worst influence of it.

            In some schools in countrysides or in East, the number of the teachers will be quite low. Similar cases ocur in those parts of Turkey in terms of equality as well. In villages and eastern regions, it is known that various irrelevant officials and people who have not been educated to be teachers are made to carry out teachering instead of teachers.

            4. Indıvidual Factors: In Turkey, there is one type of student selection exam for universities. This kind of student selection system ignores the individual differences of students who require special needs and attention. Therefore, in the exam these students will fail because they could not get appropriate education and this affect their future education in a bad way.

 

        RESOURCES

        e-kutuphane.egitimsen.org.tr/pdf/193.pdf

        www.soruyusormak.com/detay.asp?id=233

        su-erg.advancity.net/uploads/pdf/EsitlikPolitikaRaporu.pdf                   

        http://su-erg.advancity.net/uploads/pdf/Egitimde_Esitlik_Politika_Analizi_ve_Oneriler.pdf

        http://su-erg.advancity.net/uploads/pdf/BETAMRapor.pdf

       

 

APPENDIX

 

NUMBERS OF SCHOOLS, STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACCORDING TO EDUCATION LEVEL (2006–2007)

EDUCATION LEVEL

SCHOOL/ INSTUTITION

NUMBER OF STUDENTS

 

NUMBER OF TEACHERS

 

TOTAL  

BOYS

GIRLS

NURSERY SCHOOL

3.222

640.849

334.252

306.597

10.016

 

PUBLIC NURSERY SCHOOL

1.267

580.336

302.224

278.112

4.580

 

PRIVATE NURSERY SCHOOL

1.955

60.513

32.028

28.485

5.436

PRIMARY SCHOOL

34.656

10.846.930

5.684.609

5.162.321

402.829

 

PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL

33.898

10.346.509

5.408.525

4.937.984

381.354

 

PRIVATE PRIMARY SCHOOL

757

213.071

116.099

96.972

21.475

 

OPEN PRIMARY SCHOOL

1

287.350

159.985

127.365

-

SECONDARY SCHOOL

7.934

3.386.717

1.917.189

1.469.528

187.665

 

PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL

7.216

2.946.363

1.663.955

1.282.408

174.748

 

PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL

717

86.458

47.180

39.278

12.917

 

OPEN SECONDARY SCHOOL

1

353.896

206.054

147.842

-

GENERAL TOTAL SECONDARY SCHOOL

3.690

2.142.218

1.156.418

985.800

103.389

 

GENERAL PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL

2.993

1.775.244

942.561

832.683

90.716

 

GENERAL PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL

696

85.547

46.509

39.038

12.673

 

OPEN HIGH SCHOOLS

1

281.427

167.348

114.079

-

TOTAL PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SECONDARY SCHOOL

4.244

1.244.499

760.771

483.728

84.276

 

PUBLIC PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SECONDARY SCHOOL

4.223

1.171.119

721.394

449.725

84.032

 

PRIVATE PROFESSIONAL AND TECHNICAL SECONDARY SCHOOL

21

911

671

240

244

 

OPEN HIGH SCHOOL

-

72.469

38.706

33.763

-

MASS EDUCATION

10.576

4.508.564

2.545.004

1.963.560

79.370

 

PUBLIC

1.833

2.141.389

1.043.308

1.098.081

10.190

 

PRIVATE

8.743

2.367.175

1.501.696

865.479

69.180

HIGH EDUCATION

93

2 155 170

1 231 445

923 725

82 250

GENERAL TOTAL

56 481

21 538 230

11 712 499

9 825 731

762 130