Students at grade schools and high schools welcomed a two-week half-term break on Friday. About 18 million students were handed out their report cards for first semester at ceremonies filled with joy and excitement.
The break ended the first semester that began in September and along with students, some 900,000 teachers will benefit from the two-week respite.
Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı attended a ceremony at a school in the capital Ankara and advised parents not to scold their children for poor grades. Avcı told students to "get a rest, have fun and pretend to study at times to ingratiate themselves with their parents."
For Syrian children who had to flee their conflict-ridden country for Turkey, the half-term break is not a great respite, but they cheer the end of their first semester like their Turkish counterparts. In a refugee camp in the southern Turkish province of Kilis, 4,012 Syrian students received their reports in a ceremony after completing the first semester at a school set up in the camp. Children's education is provided in line with the curriculum they were subject to before arriving in Turkey and in their own language. In the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, a ceremony marked the end of the first semester for children attending a Kurdish-language school. Students of the school opened last year received their reports in Kurdish although the school is not officially recognized by education authorities as the Ministry of Education did not issue it a license to operate, citing a number of technical shortcomings. Therefore, reports handed to children were symbolic although the joy among the 110 students was genuine. Politicians from an opposition party widely supported by Kurds also attended the ceremony. Education in Kurdish was allowed in private schools in a landmark move by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, but political movements linked to the PKK, which claims to fight for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey, seek to open their own schools independent of national curriculum.
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