Following the regulation issued by the Ministry of National Education (MEB) limiting transfers from formal education to open education high schools, the procedures and principles regarding the exceptional cases in which transfers to these high schools will be allowed were determined.
Cengiz Mete, General Director of MEB Lifelong Learning, made a statement to the AA correspondent regarding the regulation that makes transitions to open high schools difficult and the circular containing the procedures and principles regarding the circumstances in which transition can be made.
Mete stated that, as the Ministry, they made changes to the Secondary Education Institutions Regulation in order to strengthen schools and teachers.
What school administrators and teachers see as a problem area; He emphasized that they have made important arrangements regarding passing grades, attendance and absence, transfers and transitions.
Mete said that they made the support and training courses functional according to the needs with the change in the directive.
THE PURPOSE IS TO PREVENT UNAUTHORIZED SPECIAL EDUCATION ACTIVITIES
Cengiz Mete stated that they saw that the transition to open high schools accelerated, especially during the epidemic period, and that an attempt was made to create a perception that open high schools were an alternative to formal education by diverting them from their purpose.
Stating that open high schools are schools where those who are excluded from formal education for various and compulsory reasons or who have lost their right to formal education continue with distance education, Mete noted that these schools cannot be expected to fulfill versatile functions such as peer learning and student-teacher interaction.
For this reason, Mete emphasized that they have rearranged the transition to open education high schools and continued as follows:
"By tying the transition to open education to certain conditions, we tried to prevent the obstacles to the versatile development of our students, possible future grievances and educational losses as a result of their leaving formal education. In addition, we also extend to our parents who, taking advantage of the situations of necessity and difficult conditions during the global pandemic process and the disaster of the century in our country, the February 6 earthquake, carry out private education studies without permission and provide unfair gain by providing unregistered income, claiming to educate our students better academically for different purposes. We aimed to prevent the activities of people or structures that cause economic burden. Again, we have taken and continue to take measures with our new regulations against those who claim to prepare students and their parents for higher education by guiding them to open education, but who carry out studies far from pedagogical principles in environments that do not comply with the standards of educational institutions and even have security problems in some of them."
Mete pointed out that directing students to open education without any reasonable justification causes devaluation of formal education, inequality of opportunity in education, waste of education investments and public resources such as course materials, and disruption of teacher employment plans.
"Therefore, as the Ministry, we had to take new measures and position schools as the center of education. We have implemented the new regulations regarding the transition to open education for the reasons we have listed," Cengiz Mete added.