20.06.2025 16:01
The Minister of National Education, Yusuf Tekin, stated that starting from the next academic year, the implementation of uniforms will be reintroduced in schools, replacing the free dress code.
Minister Tekin distributed report cards to students at the 15 July Martyrs Primary School in Bahçelievler. Participating in the end-of-year events in the schoolyard, Tekin later made statements to journalists at the "Annual Evaluation Press Conference."
Stating that the free dress application in schools will be replaced with a uniform application again, Tekin said, "Starting from next year, we have initiated the uniform application instead of the free dress application in our schools. Our teachers, administrators, and school family associations made the selections regarding this matter. The uniform application will start again from the 2025-2026 academic year," he said.
Expressing that as of today, the 2024-2025 academic year has ended for students, Tekin thanked teachers for their support during this process.
Explaining that they focused on three issues at the beginning of this academic year, Tekin said, "One of them was the curriculum we named the Turkey Century Education Model. We revised our educational programs in a format and method required by the age. While making this revision, we firmly held on to the values we possess from our past that will keep us standing tall as a country, nation, and state. We created a curriculum that includes propositions and issues that will ensure our programs internalize our national and spiritual values to raise generations that will look to the future with the strength these values give us."
Tekin stated that they started implementing this model in the first grades of primary schools, middle schools, and high schools this year, saying, "The periods where we had a curriculum that we would continue for decades without changing or touching it are over. Changes are occurring in many areas in the world, including technology, social life, and especially geographical elements, and we are continuously incorporating these changes into our programs. For this reason, we said that our curriculum will be alive and dynamic, and that there will need to be frequent revisions in this sense from now on."
"THE TURKEY CENTURY EDUCATION MODEL WILL ALSO BE IMPLEMENTED IN SECOND GRADES"
Regarding this model, Tekin mentioned that they have also implemented monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, noting that the model will be applied in the second grades of primary schools, middle schools, and high schools in the 2025-2026 academic year, and that the curriculum will be gradually implemented.
Tekin stated that the second priority issue is "vocational education," and after publishing the Vocational and Technical Education Policy Document on August 10, 2024, they have implemented a series of activities.
In this context, Tekin explained that they have taken many steps throughout the year, including opening craft workshops in middle schools, in addition to new types of vocational and technical education schools, and emphasized that families also play a significant role in children's academic success, making collaboration with families the third important issue.
Tekin expressed that they have implemented other innovations outside these three main axes, stating that the law regarding the teaching profession, which came back to the legislative agenda after the Constitutional Court's annulment and was enacted in October 2024, is one of these innovations.
Pointing out that another application implemented within this law is the National Education Academy, Tekin said:
"In addition to these, at the beginning of the last academic year, we organized the application that turned into chaos every year, especially in primary and middle schools. When children start school, the process of selecting teachers and schools began, ultimately leading to various accusations against our school administrators and teachers, with news that became widespread. At the beginning of the last academic year, we launched a software and initiated an application. We ensured that all our children of compulsory education age were registered as students in the nearest and most suitable school according to the address-based population registration system related to primary schools and middle schools. Now, we have taken the initiative in the field and carried it out directly within the Ministry's General Directorate of Information Processing. Our school administrators have been freed from suspicion. The hurtful practices experienced by our classroom teachers in schools have been eliminated."
"WE HAVE TAKEN AN IMPORTANT STEP TO DEVELOP OUR CHILDREN'S VOCABULARIES"
Tekin explained that they shared the Artificial Intelligence Policy Document with the public last week and that an Artificial Intelligence Department has been established within the Ministry.
Tekin said, "Another issue is that starting from next year, we have initiated the uniform application instead of the free dress application in our schools. Our teachers, administrators, and school family associations made the selections regarding this matter. The uniform application will start again from the 2025-2026 academic year."
Expressing that the number of words children use in daily life in Turkish bothers them greatly, Tekin continued his remarks:
"Our children have started to use a lot of social media language when communicating with us as parents or elders. We have entered a period where many words rooted in our tradition are forgotten and not used by our children. Therefore, as a continuation of the 'The Richness of Our Language is Freedom' project we initiated last year, we have implemented an important project this year to identify our vocabulary. We have taken an important step to develop our children's vocabularies so that they can express themselves more healthily in daily life."
"THE DECISION REGARDING 12-YEAR EDUCATION WILL NOT BE MADE BY THE MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION"
Tekin stated that they are a large family with approximately 18 million students, 1.2 million teachers, and nearly 75,000 schools, saying, "Within such a large family, there will certainly be practices that we do not like or approve, but the media's responsibility is to disseminate good examples by reporting them, not bad ones. This is a very respectable behavior in terms of media ethics and also very important in terms of respecting the rights and efforts of our teacher friends. In that sense, let’s publicize these good practices of our teachers and schools. I also thank you, the press members."
In response to a journalist's question about whether there will be any adjustments to the "4+4+4" system, Tekin stated that this system was introduced in 2011 to eliminate the anti-democratic mentality imposed by the February 28 process and to increase Turkey's average education duration, which was low.
Tekin said, "In this sense, Turkey is experiencing a period where these two important justifications have ended. This Turkey is no longer the same Turkey."
We are both above the average education duration and the oppressive mentality imposed by the prohibitive mindset of February 28 has now been eliminated. Therefore, as the Ministry, we stated that we will monitor the public discussions on this issue. The decision regarding 12 years of education will ultimately not be made by the Ministry of National Education. It needs to be done through legal regulation, with the involvement of the political authority. We will express our opinions on this matter in the relevant forums. After that, we will see what steps we will take.