Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer and President of Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Türkiye (TOBB) Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu have attended the inauguration ceremony of the TOBB Vocational and Technical Anatolia High School in Ordu.

The Ministry of National Education had signed a cooperation protocol with TOBB last week for the construction of 154 new schools in 154 different districts of the country.

"For the last 20 years, we have achieved tremendous headway in education. The number of classrooms which was around 200 thousand in 2000s currently reached 850 thousand. The schooling rate increased from 200 thousand to 2 million during the same period. Last 20 years left its mark in the history of education in terms of permanent and sustainable increase in the quality of human resources," said Özer during this speech at the ceremony.

Minister Özer noted that the number of students reached 1.2 million in the last 19 years adding that, "Approximately 75 percent of teachers were appointed in the last 19 years. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who allocated the largest share of the budget to education."

"We are witnessing a paradigm shift in vocational education"

Noting that vocational education was a chronic problem of the country, Özer stressed that the interventions in 1999 to vocational education high schools had a negative impact to the problem.

"Now, vocational education is going through a paradigm shift. Currently, employers are cooperating with our Ministry for the improvement of vocational education," stated Özer. 

Özer reminded that the number of schools founded in different cities of the country in cooperation with TOBB has reached 166 and vocational schools produced all products required during the pandemic.

"We will give hand in hand in order to end the misconception about vocational high schools created during the February 28 process.  From now on, vocational schools will be the subject of new projects in cooperation with vocational education stakeholders," stated Minister Özer.  

"TOBB has cooperated in the construction of 153 education centers till now"

Meanwhile, President of TOBB Hisarcıklıoğlu said that TOBB made decisions based on the belief that education is among the most prior issues of the country.

"TOBB has cooperated in the construction of 153 education centers till now. We have made total of 3,6 billion lira investment in education. But, we will not stop. We are staring a new and bigger project. We will construct 154 new schools in 154 districts," stated Hisarcıklıoğlu.

Minister Özer visited Ordu Metropolitan Municipality

Minister Özer said during his meeting with Metropolitan Mayor Mehmet Hilmi Güler that he visited the city in order to observe education investments in the field.

Özer stressed that Mayor Güler is an important stakeholder in increasing the quality of education investments.