Education Ministry

A number of families of 872 students have decided to leave the southeastern province of Diyarbak?r, after the names and personal details of their children were controversially released by a district education office, daily Zaman reported on Jan. 16.

A Greek government official on Monday dismissed as ?conspiracy theories, lies and slander? that members of the Jewish community in Greece pay less tax than other citizens.

The Education Ministry?s general secretary for religion Giorgos Kalantzis said he was reacting to claims made as part of ?the public debate and, mainly, on the dark side of the Internet.?

In a bid to deal with the enormous number of school-aged Syrian refugees currently in Turkey, the Education Ministry has resorted to implementing double-shift classes at schools in Adana, Ankara, Diyarbak?r, Gaziantep, Hatay and Kayseri.

As part of the new measures, Turkish students in these provinces attend classes before noon and refugee-students attend in the afternoon.

Turkey’s Education Ministry has issued the outline of a new moral education program to be given to public schools, encouraging students to take a more religious perspective and way of life.

Education minister, Sorin Cimpeanu on Thursday said that at the Education Ministry has arrived the request by the University of Bucharest to withdraw the PhD title in Law of Prime minister Victor Ponta and added this could be enforced according to the symmetry of the law, through an act similar in value to the one through which it has been granted.

A district educational board in the southern province of Osmaniye has sent a program including religious practices to all preschool institutions, according to Turkish daily Milliyet. 

The 21-page program, which was marked "urgent," has been sent to schools in the Kadirli district, reportedly giving the details of "Values Education" at preschool institutions.

It’s less than two months since the third sequel to the “headlines” series was published in this column, but apparently it is time for a fourth sequel. So, here we go again with more headlines from the Istanbul press in the year 2023:

The Education Ministry said on Thursday that it has fired a high school teacher who allegedly made indecent advances to one of her female pupils.

Deputy Education Minister Alexandros Dermentzopoulos said that the ministry took the action after being informed that the pupil’s parents had filed a complaint.

Turkey just hosted a controversial “National Education Council.” This is a body that many educators take part in, which makes suggestions to the Education Ministry about future strategies in the national education system. As expected, the council was bitterly contested because, as expected, both its defenders and opponents had ideology in mind rather than factual matters of education.

During the recent Education Council held in Antalya, 179 "advisory" decisions were taken. Education Minister Nabi Avcı praised the council's positions, saying, "Very important advisory decisions have been made that will set the course of the education system and enlighten future decisions."