The Ministry of Education and the European Union have collaboratively implemented a project to increase the continuity of secondary school and boost the schooling rate in Turkey.

With the help of the "Technical Support Project to Increase Continuity of the Secondary School and Schooling Rate,” or ODAP, students at high risk of dropping out of school can be detected earlier. In addition, the "prevention, intervention and recovery" integration model will be applied to help these students.

Deputy Minister of Education Petek Aşkar highlighted the significant progress Turkey has made in increasing access to education. “Schools not only educate students but also add a lot to them. Turkey has made outstanding progress in increasing access to education at every level of education,” she explained.

“As the ministry, our main focus is to strengthen the equality of opportunities in education and provide a good quality of education to all students. Turkey's schooling rate at every level of education is close to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) numbers on average in the last 20 years. I believe our work on quality education will come to fruition,” Aşkar added.

The project will be completed in June 2024 and will be applied to 50 schools in 14 provinces. Also, an innovative software will be written for the “Early Warning System” to detect students at high risk of dropping out and inform officials. The "prevention, intervention and recovery" integration model will be applied to these high-risk students.

Besides the integration model and "Early Warning System" software, recovery lessons will be provided for students to catch up on basic skills in the fields of comprehension, mathematics and science. In addition, educational activities including arts, music and drama will be developed to increase students’ motivation.

Training will be provided to schools in the framework of the project and support will be provided in terms of equipment. An adviser (mentorship) guideline will be distributed to the teachers.

At the same time, a national strategy document and school action plans will be prepared in line with the project. This enables a political framework to develop and determine accurate measures related to the subject.

Various methods will be implemented in this project to reach the target audience. Events will be held to bring students together with universities with the help of public service advertisements, promotional videos for the "Early Warning System" and integrated model, conferences and special days dedicated to raising regional awareness.

Some 45,000 out of 148,000 students did not register at a school. According to the ministry’s statistics, after graduating from secondary school, 148,986 students did not register to either a private or public school. From this number, 55,299 of the students enrolled in an open high school and 48,584 of the students enrolled in vocational training centers. However, 45,173 of the students did not enroll in any educational institution.