Emotions ran high in the spacious Congress and Culture Center at the Presidential Complex in Ankara. As their names were announced, young teachers burst into tears while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invited some among the audience to join him onstage.
Monday’s ceremony for the appointment of 15,000 teachers is welcoming news for graduates of faculties of education, who sometimes wait for years for appointments at public schools.
The appointments aim to both address the teacher shortage in newly opened schools and to prevent a disruption to in-person education. Turkey has decided to reopen schools amid the coronavirus pandemic after a lengthy break last year. Yet, a disproportionate number of students at some schools, as more students were enrolled with the resumption of in-person education, has caused a shortage in the number of teachers.
Teaching is among the most popular professions in the country, though salaries have long been relatively low for those working in public schools. The government has worked to improve the financial state of teachers and aims to address their issues with a comprehensive bill awaiting implementation by Parliament. The new bill offers significant pay raises for veteran teachers and grants them new titles like "head teacher" if they have served longer than their peers.
Speaking at the ceremony against the backdrop of a giant screen that showed the various schools where each teacher was assigned to, Erdoğan said their army of educators was being reinforced and it would be "a serious advantage" for uninterrupted education services at the time of the pandemic.
"We are endeavoring not to separate our teachers and students again, to keep our children at school. Thankfully, we concluded the first semester successfully. The efforts of our valuable teachers, measures taken by parents and students’ compliance with rules kept our schools open," Erdoğan said.
The president noted that Turkey surpassed many other countries in terms of access to health and education during the pandemic. "Many countries failed to even keep the existing number of teachers, and some even cut numbers, while Turkey continued recruiting new teachers," he highlighted.
Over the past two years, Turkey hired more than 77,000 teachers. Overall, more than 729,000 new teachers have been appointed in the past 19 years since Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) first came to power.
Erdoğan noted that the country maintains "a young, dynamic teacher population" with more than 60% of teachers at the age of 40 and below. "(Recruitment drives) helped us to catch up with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in terms of the number of students per each teacher. We also managed to improve the rights of teachers. In the past 19 years, Turkey is the only country in Europe which increased the salaries of teachers the most," he stressed.
