Education in İstanbul

Gokce Nacar

Mar 09 550 read

Education in İstanbul

In İstanbul, there are a lot of public and private schools to fulfill education purposes. They all work in accordance with Atatürk’s reformations in the field of education. In the light of these reforms, they want to create an environment where education is fruitful, innovative, systematic and secular.

It is compulsory for a child to get education for at least 12 years in İstanbul. First, there is pre-primary schools, which work as a kindergarten school or nursery for children. Here, they will play games and start learning the fun things in order to form a base before starting the primary school. In primary schools, the children get 4 years of education filled with classes such as Turkish, Mathematics, Arts and Life Knowledge. Then, for another four years, which is referred to as “middle school”, students learn about more topics with the addition of classes such as Science, Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Ethics, and Music.

After the first 8 years of compulsory education, there are high-schools. High-school lasts 4 years and it includes many lessons: Turkish Language and Literature, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English, Secondary Foreign Language, Arts, Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Ethics, and elective courses of interest. After the first two years, the students get to choose a field to focus on for the forthcoming two years. They can choose a field based on language, a field based on Maths and Sciences, a field based on non-math courses or a field based on the combination of all the fields: equally-weighted education.

How Education Works in Turkey

After the first two years, they mainly focus on preparing for the university exam. The compulsory education ends here but most of the students choose to go to university.

In İstanbul, there are lots of public schools that are free of charge for every student. Since İstanbul is a crowded city, the classrooms are also crowded. This can be a challenging issue regarding the quality of education because it is harder to give special care to each student on the topics they do not understand due to the crowd. However, in private schools, which are again very common in İstanbul, the classrooms are less crowded. The private schools have some appealing options, including the opportunities in abroad.

In İstanbul, education can be varied depending on the district. Some public schools in certain districts improve themselves to the point of not only competing with the private schools but being more prominent than them. For the private schools, the fees are rather high and parents can find the expenses too much. Even though most parents choose the public schools, many parents still choose to enroll their children in private schools. There are lots of options and criteria to consider on the subject of education in İstanbul because it is varied.

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