Victims Of New Exam, Students Commute Long-Distance To School

Students made to enroll in faraway schools based on a new exam are still waiting to be transferred to a school near their home even though it has been two months since the school term began.

The Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG) exam continues to occupy the country's agenda as students who were placed in schools for which they did not state a preference in the TEOG process are still awaiting a reversal of their situation.

The Ministry of Education had earlier announced that all the problems related to the placement of students would be resolved by Oct. 17. However, one of the victims of the new system, İsa Çelik, has been waiting for two months for the authorities to transfer his enrollment from a distant school.

Çelik was enrolled in Hüseyin Erkan İmam Hatip High School in Kumburgaz, İstanbul, which is far away from his residential district of Beylikdüzü. His father, Erkan Çelik, says his child cannot go to school as he can't afford the transportation costs for such a long distance.

“The school bus charges TL 350 a month, while my family and I struggle to get by on a monthly salary of TL 950. My child is depressed. Should the ministry's practice be deemed proper?” asked his father.

Saying that his son's only dream is to “go to school like his friends,” Erkan Çelik said he has been trying for two months to transfer his child but was unsuccessful.

“The officials said there were 33 students ahead of my son on the waiting list of students to be transferred to schools they prefer. They only recommended remaining patient until the problem is solved,” Çelik said.

Stressing that the semester will end in two months, Çelik was hopeless about reversing his child's problem. “Every day my son seeks good news from me. He worked weekends to save money for his education, but the ministry is doing everything to let my son down,” he added.

Obscure names of schools baffle students

The reduction of the types of occupational and technical schools from 22 to two -- occupational and technical Anatolian schools and multi-program Anatolian high schools -- as part of the transformation of regular high schools into Anatolian high schools begun in 2010 and was recently completed.

However, after this change, the names of the occupational and technical schools do not indicate the sub-fields which the students want to specialize in, resulting in many students mistakenly registering in schools which do not offer courses in their chosen sub-fields.

For example, some students who enrolled in Ümraniye Cumhuriyet Occupational and Technical School and 75. Yıl Cumhuriyet Occupational and Technical School learned after registering that these schools do not offer courses in the field of health but in commerce, contrary to what they believed. These students consequently had to apply for transfers to other schools.

S.B., a student from Edirne province, was forced to seek a transfer from her chosen school, which did not offer courses in the field of health, contrary to what she had thought. As a result she was forced to enroll in a school that accepts admission scores far lower than hers.

The TEOG-based enrollment system has been a disaster, with many students this year being enrolled in schools far away from their homes by the system. Thousands of students were placed in schools they had never picked while others were automatically enrolled in distant schools.

The ministry had promised that students would be placed in the nearest schools but the problems remain unsolved.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)