Don't Touch the Compulsory Free Education Period! Preschool Should Also Be Compulsory and Free!

1- Don't Touch the Compulsory Free Education Period! Preschool Should Also Be Compulsory and Free!

Education is the only hope to change the future lives of our children. While public, free, inclusive and equal education is indispensable for both our children and our country, the duration of education is being brought up for discussion. As a result of the increase in poverty,  paid education and the elimination of the scientific quality of education, school dropouts are increasing. School dropouts have exceeded one and a half million (1 million 578 thousand) in the last 3 years. Absenteeism has increased at every level. In the 2023 data alone, at least one in three children in secondary education and at least one in two children in vocational school types do not go to classes regularly. While school dropouts have increased so much, children are leaving their schools in masses due to poverty and inequality, and the Ministry of National Education, which should take the necessary measures to return children to school, is discussing the free education period and planning steps that will cause even more serious school dropouts.

With the discussion of the compulsory education period, education is being transformed from a public right into a privilege with the expressions “education is an expense to the state” and it is being said that only those who can afford it should access education. By saying that the market “needs early age workforce”, it is aimed to increase child labor and child marriages by saying that “education period prevents establishing a home”. By reducing the education period, children are forced to go to “imam hatip schools”, religious orders, and religious orders’ dormitories due to poverty and desperation, as is the case with the Ensars and Aladağs.

Education is not only limited to the goal of acquiring a profession, but also targets the social, cultural, physical-sports and psychological development of children. Reducing the education period is a great blow to the holistic development of children.

The discussions on compulsory free education should be ended, and preschool, which is the most basic public right of children, should also be compulsory and free.

2) All protocols, collaborations and projects made with the Directorate of Religious Affairs and religious orders, especially ÇEDES, should be terminated! Resources and supports transferred to religious order structures under the name of NGOs should be taken back and used for public education, private educational institutions and religious order schools and dormitories should be nationalized!

Education is a public right. It is not a commodity. It is a citizenship right. It cannot be bought with money. As stated in the 1739 National Education Fundamental Law, education can only be carried out by public workers and education workers. It is a violation of the right to education and the right of children for people who do not have the qualification of an educator to carry out activities in schools, dormitories, places of religious order structures under the name of NGOs, and Quran courses for 4-6 year olds.

All educational institutions from preschool to higher education, are surrounded by structures,   such as ÇEDES, sect structures and “Ülkü Ocakları” Nationalist structures under the name of protocol, cooperation, project and NGO, children's education rights and children's rights are violated, children are abused due to the content of the activities carried out. Various foundations and associations close to the government are carrying out ideological activities in schools under the name of summer schools again this summer, and public resources belonging to us are once again being used not for public, scientific education but for the ideological purposes of these structures.

All protocols and collaborations signed with structures such as ÇEDES, religious orders, etc. should be terminated. Education should be provided only by education workers. The billions transferred to these structures from public resources and taxes should be taken back to date and used for children's right to public education, school meals, transportation to school, and housing rights. Dozens of public lands and public buildings have also been transferred to these structures. Public lands, public buildings, and public dormitories transferred to religious orders should be taken back, and private educational institutions, religious schools, and dormitories should be nationalized.

3- The problems experienced in education are increasing exponentially every year, and the Ministry of National Education (MEB) spends on religionization, marketization and staffing in education instead of producing permanent solutions to these problems. While the government and MEB are trying to turn education into a tool for current politics and heroism; a tool for the government to impose its own ideology and to build the society it wants that obeys and submits; this education period, new problems have been added to the problems from previous periods

One of these problems has been child labor. Our children are systematically exploited for the sake of ideological and economic interests. The current government is gradually increasing the dose of using child labor as cheap labor in line with the interests it has established with capital and the demands of capital. According to TÜİK data, the total number of registered child workers was 759 thousand in 2023 and increased to 869 thousand in 2024. When the children who were made workers under the name of MESEM by the MEB and the children who are working unregistered are included in this number, the number exceeds 2 million. According to SGK records, 45 children under the age of 18 lost their lives in work-related homicides in 2023. According to the Health and Safety Labor Assembly notifications, at least 764 child workers have lost their lives in the last 12 years. The Ministry of National Education seems not to be satisfied with these numbers, and in response to claims that employers have difficulty in finding intermediate staff, it is opening the duration of compulsory education to discussion and seeking ways to bring more children into the workforce.

The Ministry of National Education, which delivers children who should be in school to employers, operates almost like a “child labor agency”. While it is considered too much for our children to eat a meal at school, public resources are used in line with the interests of the bosses, not the children. This situation is ignoring the future of the country. Education policies should be determined according to the future and superior interests of our children, not the interests and demands of capital, bosses, and holding companies. Education is a fundamental right of all children and should be shaped by public policies.

4-Don't Touch the Right to Mixed Education!

 

First, with 4+4+4 in imam hatip schools, and then in secondary education with the 2018 Secondary Education Institutions Regulation, children's most fundamental right to mixed education has been taken away from them step by step. The statements of reducing the duration of compulsory, free education and simultaneously completely removing the right to mixed education continue one after another.

 

Mixed education is not a choice, it is a right. A right cannot be discussed or removed under the name of choice. The right to mixed education is a pedagogical and scientific fact. Only in the 2013-2018 TÜİK data, it is stated that one in every 5 women was married off at a young age. In a period when child marriages have increased so much, reducing the duration of education and removing mixed education will increase child marriages even more.

The statements to remove the right to mixed education and the practices to remove mixed education should be stopped. Mixed education should be implemented at all levels of education and types of schools as soon as possible.

5.When the results of teacher assignments and administrative assignments made to project schools were announced on April 8, it was understood that the most comprehensive “teacher massacre” in history had been carried out. Just as we raised our objection in 2016 when this practice emerged, saying “a ministry responsible for our right to public education cannot call schools unqualified, we are not your project”, today our children and us parents have protested in front of schools, in their yards and in the fields for days against this unjust and unlawful practice. Despite the objections of the parents, the number of high schools declared as project schools has increased each year. Today, in February 2025, the definition of project school was removed from the regulation. The article regulating project schools was also removed from the regulation. Thousands of teachers were exiled based on a school definition removed from the regulation. The definition of project school, which no longer exists, removed from the regulation is in the exam guide.

 

Schools are public institutions, not anyone’s private business. It is not acceptable to close or open the doors of these institutions, which survive on the taxes of the people, to some teachers. The fact that thousands of teachers will be cut off from these schools by the administrators' discretion also eliminates the status of these institutions as public institutions, which is unacceptable. Therefore, standing against the project school application and the massacre of teachers taking place in these schools means defending our future and the public.

6) Centralized Exam System Applications Based on Competition and Elimination Should Be Ended! Exam Fees Should Be Removed! Each Student's Interest, Abilities and Skills and Social Benefit Should Be Considered!

Due to the increase in poverty and the increase in education expenses, especially nutrition, accommodation and transportation, which have gradually ceased to be a public right, and many other reasons such as unemployment with diplomas, there has been a serious decrease in the application rates for LGS (high school entrance exam) and YKS (higher education entrance exam) this year. With each passing year, the only hope for children and young people to change their future lives, education, is being taken away from them.

Due to the exam, competition and competitive exam system and schooling policy, children are forced to go to private schools to avoid going to schools they do not want, such as imam hatip schools, vocational high schools, MESEMs, or private universities to avoid going to departments they do not want.

Data on the disengagement from education is alarming. All levels of education, including higher education, should be free. Education, nutrition, housing, and transportation should be provided free of charge by the state. Every student in need should be given a scholarship that is non-refundable and non-recourse. The practice of a centralized exam system based on competition and elimination should be ended. An education system where every student is supported according to their interests, talents, and skills, where the practice of school types is ended, where they have access to equal, inclusive, free, secular, scientific education, and where social benefit is the most fundamental right of all children and young people

7- PARENTAL SOLIDARITY NETWORK

On March 18, due to the cancellation of the diploma of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and then the detention of many people in an operation centered at Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in the early hours of March 19, mass protests took place. During this process, the most active and massive participants in the protests, meetings and demonstrations regarding the events were university students.

Instead of listening to the voices rising from universities and the streets and trying to understand what was being said, the political power that could not even tolerate the expression of objections tried to suppress the rising objections of students and young people with oppression, detentions and arrests. This move by the government, which put detentions and arrests into action to silence university students, caused violence and rights violations against students in the field.

Students who were exercising their rights guaranteed by the constitution and laws were subjected to oppression, violence and deprived of their freedom in an unlawful manner. A total of 301 young people were arrested. From the first day of the detentions, we talked about how we would support our children and all parents and how we would increase solidarity. First, we called on all parents and anyone who wanted to volunteer for solidarity to weave a solidarity network together with a statement we made as the Student Parent Association. As student families in Maltepe, we took to the streets with a banner reading “Don’t Touch Our Children”. We were parents who had been running between courthouses and prisons for days for our children. Naturally, we decided to call it the Parent Solidarity Network. We established Parent Solidarity Networks in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Bursa and Edirne, reached many families and made the issue public by making calls through social media and national channels, as well as by making calls in front of prisons and courthouses, and by visiting institutions. As a result, all young people were released in time. Our solidarity with young people whose cases are ongoing or whose housing and scholarship rights have been taken away will continue until they regain all their rights.

8- The statements made by the government and the Ministry of National Education in the budget discussions every year, that education gets the lion's share of the budget is a deception, and the government is not managing the problems, but tries to manage perception.

The share of the Ministry of National Education budget, which was 13.3 percent in 2016, in the central government budget decreased every year and regressed to 9.9 percent in 2024.

In Turkey, 25 years ago, in the 1989-1990 academic year, there was only two provinces with transportation. They said we had moved forward, 19,708 village schools were closed in the last 22 years. The principle of access to education, which is one of the basic principles of education, was eliminated, transportation education became applicable in all provinces everywhere in our country.

While there were 305 students in transportation education 25 years ago, in the answer given to the parliamentary question in the 2018-2019 academic year, the number of students reaching schools with transportation education reached 1 million 325 thousand 289. Hundreds of thousands of children were trying to reach school by transport.

As the economic crisis and poverty increased, austerity measures were announced in the public sector, especially in the field of education. One of the decisions they announced as savings was the restriction on transportation education with the austerity measures circular and the regulation change dated August 1.

Transportation education covers primary school, middle school, high school students,students with special education needs and their parents who will accompany them, and non-formal education course participants. With the circular and regulation change, the right to school and education is actually being eliminated. In a period when mass school dropouts are experienced for economic reasons; with this circular, another decision was made that takes away the right to education from village children in general and girls in particular.

We demand information from the ministry and education administrators about how many of our children have dropped out of their schools due to the results of this circular.

9 - The 2025 academic year has ended. However, millions of our children completed this year hungry, mentally tired, and hopeless.

The increasing economic crisis, deepening poverty, and inadequacies in public social policies have hit children and education the hardest this year. Today, hundreds of thousands of children in Türkiye go to school without breakfast or lunch. One in every two children under the age of 15 lives at risk of poverty. This situation is not only a health problem; it is a systematic violation of children's right to education, their right to nutrition, and their right to live humanely.

The impact of poverty on children has reached a level that can no longer be ignored. Education is no longer a right on paper for children who come to school hungry, who cannot focus on their lessons, and who cannot be nourished during their developmental age. This picture also leads to an increase in school dropouts, the spread of child marriages and child labor, and the permanence of social inequalities.

The 2025 school year was a year in which the public school meal policy has still not been implemented. Although the demand for free, balanced and quality meals to be provided to every child in schools was on the public agenda, the Ministry of National Education did not take concrete steps in this regard.

- The Ministry of National Education was insufficient to expand the school meal program throughout the year. Pilot applications launched in 2023 were not expanded; in some regions, they were completely terminated.

- Even students in earthquake zones could not access regular, sufficient and healthy school meals.

- Due to the increasing financial burdens of parents (transportation, canteen, stationery, service, school contribution fee), many children were distanced from school and school dropouts increased.

- The academic success of children living in poverty decreased, and serious problems were observed in their emotional and physical development.

- With the continuation of market-based policies in education, inequalities have deepened. For children who do not have access to private schools, education in public schools has become a mere formality.

 

It is a scientific fact that school meals increase academic success, reduce school dropouts, increase the schooling rate of girls, and support children psychologically.

Data on children's psychological health is also quite worrying. Because the hormones that are activated during hunger are destructive hormones. The hormones activated by hunger first break down the glycogen in the liver, then the fat tissue, and finally the muscle tissue.

Children experience symptoms of depression due to hunger and malnutrition. Low serotonin levels cause depression and anxiety.

According to the data on children, poverty, and life announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute for the first time last year, 7.3 percent of children between the ages of 5-17 feel depressed every day. According to the data, 1 million 958 thousand 888 children of compulsory education age are depressed and anxious. 50 percent of children between the ages of 13 and 17 experience extreme anxiety.

School meal programs are not a need-based food support intervention but a basic civic right. They are a public right. Free school meal programs are implemented in 106 countries around the world.

Access to clean water along with school meals is a public right for all children. Water consumption is of vital importance. Adequate water consumption positively affects body temperature regulation, digestive system health, energy level, mental and physical performance, and electrolyte balance. A healthy individual should drink an average of 2 to 2.5 liters of water per day.

There is no access to drinking water in schools, no control-monitoring systems, and the number of toxic pollutants that may contaminate the water is very high. School water systems with filtration systems capable of holding toxic chemicals should be established in schools, and children should be provided with access to water through water fountains to be installed at appropriate points in the school.

While school meals are provided by the state in the vast majority of OECD countries, Turkey continues to let its children go hungry.

School meals are not just about filling the stomach;

İt means ensuring equality in education, increasing school attendance, reducing child poverty, increasing academic success, and improving public health and well-being in the long term.

Before the start of the 2025-2026 school year, a free and healthy school meal should be implemented in every school.

These meals should be prepared by nutrition experts and their contents should be based on scientific criteria.

They should be provided inclusively to all children, with priority given to transported education zones, disadvantaged neighborhoods, rural areas, and earthquake zones.

Effective cooperation should be established between the Ministry of National Education, the Ministry of Health, and local governments; food services should be entrusted to public kitchens, not to subcontractors.

10- The AKP government has followed three fundamental lines that have never changed in education since 2002: religiousization, marketization and laborization steps. The budget allocated to education has been de-qualified in line with these policies. Public education has suffered greatly from the government's management of Turkey like a company. We see that the number of private schools has increased almost tenfold during the AKP government. The government continues to increase resources to capital in the marketization of education without interruption. We know that students studying in private schools are provided with support ranging from 12,800 TL to 18,000 TL per student. However, the transfer of resources is not limited to these; the government continues to make decisions in favor of capital in many items such as land allocation and tax exemption, and states that it will take steps to ensure that the rate of private schools is at least twenty percent.

So much so that the government has been able to allocate resources to private education support even in earthquake zones, despite our children still receiving education in barracks. While resources are being transferred to capital, public schools continue to be paid for. The expenses of schools are being transferred to school family associations and the public right of education is being rapidly liquidated. This situation also reproduces existing inequalities and is contrary to the principle of equality in public services.

The transfer of public resources that belong to all of us to private schools instead of public schools harms our common future and public education, which will form the most important basis of unity. Education does not only provide individual benefit, it is the most important gain and investment for our social benefit and common future.

The struggle for secular, scientific, public and mixed education is the struggle to protect the future of our children and our country. The Ministry of National Education (MEB) is responsible for the secular, scientific education rights of all our children. We invite MEB to fulfill its responsibility.

This is our call to all parents. You are not alone. Reach out to us, the Student Parents Association, for every practice that violates your children's secular, scientific education rights. We will be with you for all your legal and democratic rights. No parent will walk alone. No child will grow up alone.

Ogrenci Veli Dernegi (Student Parent Association)    Çagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi

19.06.2025