Republic of turkey

ANNEX 7. NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN SECONDARY EDUCATION LEVEL BY YEARS

TABLE 12.

Year	General High School	Vocational High School	Total	Share of Vocational High Schools (%)
1923-1924	1,241	2,558	3,799	67
1943-1944	37,259	11,030	48,298	23
1963-1964	127,968	50,318	178,286	28
1983-1984	537,617	364,176	901,793	40
2000-2001	1,506,379	938,028	2,444,407	38
2001-2002	1,908,493	947,358	2,855,851	33
2002-2003	2,053,735	981,224	3,034,959	32
2003-2004	1,963,998	1,050,394	3,014,392	35
2004-2005	1,937,055	1,102,394	3,039,449	36
2005-2006	2,079,938	966,347	3,046,285	32

ANNEX 8. NUMBER OF GRADUATES BY SCHOOL TYPES IN 2003-2004 ACADEMIC YEAR

TABLE 13.

School Type	Number of Graduates
Overall Secondary Education	683,019
Overall High School	452,379
General High Schools	343,171
Anatolia High School	69,339
Science High School	3,469
Anatolia Fine Arts High School	1,447
Anatolia Teacher High School	9,174
Special General High School	25,239
Vocational and Technical High Schools	230,640
Technical Education for Boys	101,839
Technical Education for Girls	46,921
Trade and Tourism Education	62,083
Religion Education	11,731
Special Education	361
Health Vocational High Schools	7,533
Special Vocational and Technical High Schools	172

ANNEX 9. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS RELATED TO EDUCATION QUALITY IN TURKEY

There are three separate research data that can be utilized in determining place of education quality in Turkey in international comparisons. They are results of TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA.

TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) realized by an institution that perform international measurements and assessments is an international level determination examination on science and mathematics repeated in each four years. 38 countries including Turkey participated in the third of this examination counducted in 1999. The examination was taken by the students in the 8^th grade of 2,204 schools in our country. According to TIMSS report Turkey ranked 33^rd in science and 31^st in mathematics among 38 countries. Our country is after Iran, Jordan and Indonesia in science and after Tunisia in mathematics.¹¹⁹

The second study in the same scope is “Reading Skills Research” taken by primary education 4^th grade students in 35 countries in scope of Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) project of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Total 5,390 students from 154 primary schools in 62 provinces of Turkey have participated in the research. According to results of PIRLS, Turkey ranks 28^th among 35 countries and is below international average.¹²⁰

PISA, which is the most comprehensive international assessment project, targets to determine whether the students at 15 years of age in OECD countries are sufficiently prepared for life at the end of compulsory education and to assess their mathematics, science, literacy levels and problem solving skills.¹²¹

The assessments made by PISA-2003 in which Turkey participated, covers 4 main fields. They are: Mathematics, Science, Reading, Problem Solving.

According to PISA results;

• 
  In mathematics fields, Turkey ranks 29^th among 30 OECD countries and 33^rd among 41 countries in scope of the assessment with 423 average.
  
• 
  In reading field, average of Turkey is 441. Turkey ranks 28^th among OECD countries and 34^th among 41 countries with this average.
  
• 
  In science and problem solving fields, Turkey ranks second last among OECD countries and 36^th among 41 countries and its average is 434.
  
• 
  Place of Turkey in four research fields of PISA-2003 is not good. Some results related to Mathematics level are as follow:
  
• 
  2.4% of Turkish students are at level 6. This rate is 4% for OECD countries.
  
• 
  8% of the students in OECD countries are at level 1 whereas this rate is 25% for Turkey. The percentage of students under level 1 is 11% for OECD countries whereas this rate is 28% for Turkey.
  

Figure 1 shows distribution of student performances at level 6 for Mathematics for EU and OECD countries and Turkey. Level 1 is the bottom and level 6 is the top level for performance in mathematics. Even though there is a normal distribution in other countries for these levels, there is a different distribution in Turkey. The important reality emphasized by this distribution is the fact that our schools provide high level education to a very small number of students whereas they provide low level education to majority of students. This situation that is not seen in any of the other countries is an indicator that should be underlined in terms of the problematic structure of our education system.


Percentage of Students

Turkey

New Countries

Members

OECD

Figure 1. PISA-2003, Student performances in mathematics by learning competency scale with 6 levels¹²²

As a result, all these data show that quality of our secondary education system is very low. Of course what causes this situation is not higher education placement examination but people who shape education according to this examination.