um hello everyone and Welcome to our departmental series um in the Department of Education research at Lancaster University today we have um back here Gear with us and he's going to be talking about his research inequality in transition to high schools in Turkey so before we start there's a couple of um things that I need to disclose um the seminar has been live streamed for postgraduate students staff and other interested people who can ask questions at the end of the presentation or via the ch
at box so after Baker's presentation there's going to be question and answer sessions you could ask your questions or you could post your questions to the chat session which I will be monitoring the session will also be recorded and the recording will be available on the department website um so before we start please can all attendees switch off their cameras and meter microphone during the presentation that will be quite good if you can do that and thank you all and right our presenter today i
s Baker gear uh he holds a PhD in instructional technology from Utah State University he's an associate professor at Anchorage University turkey previously he was on a visit and research appointment at the central studies in higher education at the University of California Berkeley as well as was an advisor to the minister of National Education of Turkey currently he's also an advisor to the president of the Council of Higher Education his primary research interests include data science computat
ional science computational social science educational policy studies comparative and International Education and higher education so welcome again uh take care and here is to you we're looking forward to it thank you for Murat for your nice introduction I would like to also start by thanking to Melissa and Jonathan for their kind meditation and I know many colleagues from Lancaster University by their academic studies and I am very happy to be here today in my talk I will focus on the last two
decades of Turkish education uh specifically I will talk about the transition from the Middle School to high schools or from primary school to Secondary School and as you as you may know in Turkey we have a centralized or standardized or national exam for this transition so students from 8th grade take this exam and then according to the exam they are placed into a high school program based on their choice and based on their scores so firstly I will give some background information about Turkish
education and then I will focus on the national exams utilized for this transition to high schools over the last two decades uh I will also give some brief information about the changes to this transition systems uh as as I explained in a moment we have several different systems in the last two decades and I will also provide an explanation for for how or why we have made these changes after that I will present the results of some of my studies with my colleagues on the inequality in this trans
ition from middle school to high schools I will also incorporate some of your statistics and some International comparisons and let me also state that these slides are available online I I have uploaded to my website so if anybody would like to you know reach them they can download from my and my website and uh before I talk about the transition into high schools I think we should note that Turkish education system has always been under pressure from the University entrance exam so before we tal
k about high schools we need to talk about higher education because there is a big competition over there and that competition has direct consequences for high schools so that has been as you see in the graph there has been a great unmet demand for higher education for instance in 2000 about 1.5 1.4 million students took the Central University and since examination but only four hundred thousand of them were admitted to universities so about 1 million of them were not admitted to universities or
colleges and as of 2022 about 3 million and 200 million students I'm sorry 3 million and 200 000 students take the exam and about only one of them one million of them were admitted again into colleges or universities so most of the students keep retaking the exam because they are not being placed in a program of their choice so there has been and still an imbalance between demand and supply for higher education as you may notice in the graph except in 2009 because in 2009 most high schools didn
't graduate students because there there has been a change to duration of high schools and at that time uh duration of high schools were extended from three years to four years so most high schools didn't graduate at that year so that's why the number of exam takers were dropped but the number of admitted students were about the same for the last decade so this imbalance for higher education and there is only one way to enter into higher education because there is only just one Central examinati
on just once in a year this imbalance for higher education creates pressure for admitting into a selective high school so most people spend money for their kids to go to a selective high schools so they they take a private tutoring or you know they they sent their students to private schools in the in the middle school so that they can go into a selective High School uh so before I talk about the exams and the changes made about the exams I think uh we had to spend a little bit more time on this
because unless we understand this persistent problem uh I don't think we can understand the pressure on high school and how we keep reproducing inequality in our system uh so why we had this problem uh I think this is related with the late expansion of higher education system in Turkey so the the first problem that I would like to point about is related with the late expansion as you may see in the graph blue and dark blue provinces representing cities that had already universities before 2000
before 1992 actually so before 1992 in Turkey although it has 81 provinces most of the provinces uh didn't have universities so to be exact only for the provinces had Universities at that time but for the one provinces didn't have universities or colleges at that time uh so when we answer into uh after 2000 uh there was uh a newly elected government in 2002 which is the ruling current party and at that time the government response to this uh great demand for higher education was the established
new universities in mostly less to all of the regions of turkey so in 2006 2007 2008 government established a total of 41 universities in this provinces so while the expansion of higher education system alleviated the problem regarding the unmet demand for higher education still the university entrance exam continued to be the biggest pressure on the entire education system because most of these newly established programs were not considered as you know more selective or of quality and so the pr
essure on the education system from the University entrance exam continued up until this this day and the second problem that we have to I think understand before we talk about the exams and the transition is the problem of hierarchy among high schools or High School types so uh there is a definite hierarchy among High School types in Turkey by hierarchy I mean high schools are ranked based on their entrance scores which in fact are related to their University entrance course because these schoo
ls are selective School especially science high schools are selective schools so kids with the high scores enter into this high schools and then when they go to apply to University entrance examination they have highest you know average scores so the students and families Choose Or compete for high schools that have high average scores in University entrance exams so this graph based on official statistics of 2022 shows that there is a huge variation in terms of placement rates among different H
igh School types by placing trades I mean placement into a college program so just for the sake of consistency let me remind you that this Statistics or the the figures in this uh you know graph are calculated for the newly graduates of newly graduates in 2022 or those who participated in University entrance Examination for the first time for the first time so at the top of the hierarchy you see science high schools and they have like 44 of their graduates 44 percent of their graduates are place
d in a four-year higher education program or a bachelor program 44 of them but at the bottom of the hierarchy you see Vocational High Schools and only three percent of their graduates are placed in a four-year program somewhere in between between the top and bottom we see regular high schools or Anatolian high schools which is called in Turkish anatoline high schools they have like 18 percent of their graduates are placed in a four-year program so like the aims of science high schools and Anatol
ian high schools are very similar to each other almost the same aims but we see there like placement rates are very different from each other so this this achievement Gap or the hierarchy between High School types in Turkey I think the standouts the the most fundamental problem of high schools or secondary education in Turkey and uh actually this problem is very well known uh like the problem of hierarchy among high schools in turkey has been noted in many International reports uh for instance t
his figure is taken from a report by the World Bank from 2013 and as you can see in the graph at least 10 different types of high schools like Vocational High School general high schools science high schools Etc there are so many different types of schools and all of them are being sampled in in the Pisa assessment and as you can see from the vertical line average reading scores are very different from each other so there are great or considerable performance differences between students student
s of this different type of high schools and let me also remind you that Pisa assess 15 years of age students so all of the students are 15 years of age and if you look at this report the World Bank report it states that a student in the best program which is science high schools had pizza supports that were on average 147 points higher than students in the Stream with the lowest support which is vocational schools so this Gap represent more than three years of schooling so again all of them are
15 years of age but those students who are going to science high schools performing about three years of schooling or better performing about three years of schooling which is around 147 points so there is a great performance difference between this school types so this streaming process or this tracking occurs in the transition from 8th grade to ninth grade and as I said you know this situation has been noted in many International reports like for instance and oecd Report also not that the sel
ection process that streams students into different kinds of high schools according to their abilities is likely to have an effect on their academic performance and [Music] and also when turkey joins oecd's pizza for the first time in 2003 one of the results was very shocking I think because as you can see in the graph in terms of between Circle variants turkey tops the uh you know figure turkey is it has the scores with the most between super variants among all the oecd countries or all the Pis
a participating countries and in that report also report notes that uh on average across oecd countries differences in performance of 15 years old between schools account for about 40 I'm sorry 34 percent of the oecd average between student variants but in Turkey variation in performance between schools is particularly large and is about twice the oecd average between school variance so I mean this is very important and uh we can also see a similar mentions in our national reports in official re
ports and but as I will I will show in a moment although this problem has been very well known for about two decades still we have a very similar problems so we have to discuss whether our policies are working or not or whether we are you know following the right direction or not and also uh why there was a hierarchy among High School types there was another actually challenge because education system in Turkey has been coping to meet with increasing demand for Education as you can see there wer
e only 2.4 million high school students in Turkey in 2000 the number almost double to 4.7 Million by 2010. and after 2012 in which in Turkey there was a extension of mandatory schooling to the mandatory schooling was extended from eight years to 12 years uh so by the 2022 uh right now we have about 6.5 million students in high schools so there is a great uh challenge uh by the you know increasing uh demand for Education as well so the system was expanding rapidly amid the imbalance between suppl
y and demand for Education as well as the hierarchy among high schools so you may ask at this point what was the response of policy makers against these challenges and you know problems so well the policy makers were panicking you know unfortunately frequent changes were made in the transition between education levels and the main reason behind these changes is the criticism that Central exams negatively affect the education system so people argue that Central examinations increase students Stre
ss and Anxiety uh also people criticize that you know current tests do not adequately assess student learning or students how to take private lessons and courses for these exams so uh all these uh criticism uh created a pressure on the policy makers so policy makers think that you know like the transition system is the major problem so uh they had this kind of assumption if we made some improvements in the system or the transition system then it will also increase uh that will also translate it
into as a increase in the quality of education system all these changes and uh like we had different uh you know changes the policy makers aim several things uh one of them was they wanted to minimize students dependency on what they called out of school resources or private lessons they also wanted to assess student achievement and competencies in a comprehensive way they also wanted to reduce test anxiety or to increase the quality of Education so these are the uh like declared aims of the pol
icy makers and this figure that you see a withdraw this one is in August 2012 and at that time there was only three major changes uh like one of them in from 2005 to six the other one 2008 to 9 and the other one 2011 to 12. and people were speculating at that time whether there there should be another change and we uh like when we wrote this report there was no systemic change at that time but that's why we put a question mark over there and then as I will show you in a moment there were going t
o be another two major systemic change from that time to up until now so uh so in 2004 we had a system which is called uh oks Etc so we have too many acronyms you know but basically although the type of the exams changed among these systems all of them had centralized exams one of them had like three exams one of them had just one exam one of them had like six exam per semester Etc so a different kind of exams but the common thing amongst all system is they had a centralized system centralized e
xams across all the systems and uh I'm especially going to talk about the last two ones so teog or telok in Turkish was Ministry use talk between 2013 and 2017. so in this system especially this is markedly different from the other systems because all incoming high school students were placed in a high school based on their standardized exam scores so this is very different from the other ones because all the other systems uh we had like selective schools and if the student would like to go to t
hose selected schools then they have to take uh you know this standardized exams but otherwise they are fine they can go to just a regular High School which is close to their home Etc but in this system all the students no matter which school they want to go they have to enter into this exam they they are going to be have an exam school and based on that exam score students are going to be placed in a high school of their choice and after 2018 we had what's called LGS and after 2018 somewhere be
tween 10 percent or 15 percent of the old incoming students were placed in high schools based on their exams scores so again about 10 percent of the high schools were deemed as selective high schools and those two those high schools accepting their students based on their National standardized exam scores so using several recent studies based on large large data sets obtained from the ministry of National Education and as well as other studies I will talk about the social economic inequality in
this transition to high schools and also I try to comment on the impact of these recent changes on the high schools in Turkey this is one of our recent studies that was published in like 2021 and as you may see the authors this you know erinson the second author is our current minister of National Education at that time he was a assistant minister of education so he's one of the quotas and our current Minister also knows the problems very well because you know we conduct this study together and
what we did was we in Turkey we have centralized what's called e-sukul database all the information of the students have to have in that database so we took their you know uh like we used sex Middle School type family income level mothers and fathers education level class and school size as well as teacher seniority or their services you know how many years have been teaching or have they been teaching and also in service training you know how many days have they have get they have got you know
in service training and we took this information and we combined with their High School Entrance exams course which is uh centralized you know standardized squash and uh why we did this study because yes there are related studies and most of them utilize International assessments such as Pisa but this is a high stake exam so we wanted to understand uh you know like we want to determine the factors related to academic achievements by using data from a high school or high-stake exam and uh what we
have found is uh like we have found significant relationships among school size uh and academic achievement and this is consistent with the you know previous uh studies uh and the level of competition between schools is high in large schools and classes which increase average achievements so the fact that the class sizes are concurrent with the close with the school size in Turkey uh should be considered what I mean is the bigger the so-called the bigger the class so what does this mean for ine
quality it means that the number of large size schools are especially higher in metropolitan cities and regions and those regions with the high socio-economic levels so there was an inequality in terms of the school size or the distribution of the school size and also in this study we also [Music] consistent with our objective of the study we want to measure between school variants and we between school variants was calculated for a verbal achievement and numerical achievement and we used in ord
er to calculate between school variants we used intra-class correlation coefficient and uh our results demonstrated between school variants explains about 27 or 24 percent of the variation in students verbal and numerical achievements respectively these rates are slightly lower than those studies which use international large-scale studies such as Pisa if you remember I showed a result from a Pisa 2003 in that graph the between school variants was much larger than these figures but still these f
igures or between school variants can explain the differences in student achievement and remains important to a significant extent uh and I'll find it relates to teaching seniority I think is very important and uh teaching seniorities amongst variables most significantly related to student achievement so this result again which is consistent with those of the national and international large-scale assessments highlights the importance of the professional seniority of teachers the white gap betwe
en student assuming turkey is remarkable and in general teachers in Turkey being their professional life in disadvantages regions and move to socioeconomically advantages regions and schools as they gain seniority so in Turkey teachers have a point-based merit system so let's say there are feelings in Southeastern part of turkey so they have to start their career over there and then as they have gained seniority they can move toward the west okay so this system seems to cause the unequal distrib
ution of teachers based on their seniority across regions and cities just I would like to give a simple example in Ankara which is the capital city of Turkey the teachers I'm talking about public teachers the teachers on average have 16 years of service or seniority but in cherna which is in South Eastern part border if you see just here we have like at the right corner we have hakari and we have sherna he should not which is in the Southeastern uh Corner part of turkey and considered as you kno
w underdeveloped City the teachers on average have only two years of service so think about it I mean we have a public system and in one part of the country teachers have average of 16 years of service and at the other part of the country we have only just two years of service so I think there is something wrong with the way we we distribute our teachers uh and you know we take when we take into seniority into consideration and also another in another study in order to understand the uh you know
the we have since we have so many changes we want to understand uh the systemic effect of these changes uh so uh for this particular study we want to understand what are students mathematic assume change significantly after these systemic changes and for this particular study we take into uh we want to statistically control you know students gender age parent education level and their eighth grade achievements after we control all these variables we control all this variable and we found that u
h a significant a sharp decrease in the ninth grade mathematical achievement occurs after every systemic change in this transition exam so whenever we have a systemic change as students assume drops you know so this is consistent across all the changes uh Additionally the largest decrease was in this period from 2013 to 2014 and these largest degrees is found in what we call or teog in which all students had to take into exam they had to take into exam and we see that after this system was intro
duced there uh you know achievement scores dropped uh the most So based on these results in our article we recommended to make incremental improvements rather than you know radical changes to alleviate the problems in high school transition systems and from that time now we haven't had any you know systemic change in Turkey but I don't know whether we will have similar changes in the future or not so uh up until now I have I have been talking about the visible problem yes hierarchy problem is ve
ry visible I mean uh like people know this problem very well but this problem actually uh has another site which is invisible like on the left side we see uh like uh all the different types of high schools have average uh like Terror scores or te or G scores and we see there is a sharp difference among different types of high schools but on the right side uh we see that beneath this achievement gap between the school types there is a hierarchy of socio-economic levels of students I mean this is
a very important I think and again this is consistent with the Pisa findings but in this particular study with one of my doctoral students azaleah Jingles conducted a study and she wanted to explain teogs course by using Pizza survey so we want to understand again this is a high stake exam so we use Pizza survey to explain a high high-stake exam and the result shows that those students with the most affluent backgrounds go to the most advantageous schools again what is striking I think is the fa
ct that the achievement gap between school types is is created by an exam conducted by the state which defines itself not as a you know neoliberal state but as a social welfare state uh again a similar study was conducted uh like two years ago and we conduct a similar study again using a large data set from the minister of National Education We compare the parental education levels of students who were admit to science high schools versus all other high school students and let me remind you that
Science High School considered as the top high schools in in turkey that's why we focused on those schools in this particular study and again uh like over here rats represent lower education level uh blue represent mid-level education and uh gray ones represent higher education uh levels of parents and our results show that those students who go to the science high schools come from the most educated families uh like just give an example in 2019 all other high schools when we take into consider
ation of the old students only 14 percent of their parents had high education but in the same year for science high schools 45 percent of their parents come from a background of you know higher education so uh like we had similar results for mother's education levels as well as family income so there was again a similar pattern for mother's education level and family income and all of these results were are available in in that article so this is my last slide so uh where do we go from here like
after uh we see there is a you know like uh striking uh visible and invisible hierarchy problem and uh parental education and socioeconomic status affects the achievement in this uh you know transition exam uh where do we go from here first of all let me just state that yes there has been so much criticism regarding this uh education system and education dependency on the centralized exams we have had very few empirical studies so we need more I think empirical studies uh on on this topic and a
lso uh although we have made so many changes and the policy makers uh argued that after these changes there will be less stress on students or on the education system still we have continued concerns about stress so we have to we have to again uh question whether those targets were achieved or or not so that's why I think we have to uh need a policy change and we need more data driven decision making and this is also related with the rhetoric about objectivity versus fairness so uh which is unfo
rtunate I think as a nation and which is similar to across many nations in the world I think we need to stop rhetoric about the objectivity of national or standardized exams I think we need to pay more attention to the fairness in designing this transition systems and in order to distance ourselves from the standardized exam I think we have to value and increase public trust in school grades and unfortunately uh we have low public trust in school grades so school grades are not considered as a g
ood or valid uh predictor uh or uh valid tool for admitting students into high schools so we have to change that public perception also new policies should be designed to decrease this achievement gap between high schools as I mentioned in 2018 which is current a new system has been started and at that time the minister of National Education announced that only 10 percent of the students were going to be admitted to these selective schools but now it's about 16 percent of the students were admit
ted to this selective high schools so the number keep increasing so after maybe if we keep this current system more and more schools are being labeled as selective schools and more and more schools perhaps May admit students based on this standardized exam so again Back to the Future you know like uh we like we have seen these changes before so perhaps in the future we may have similar discussions uh again and another policy areas that I think uh we should focus on is relate to the distribution
of this qualified or senior teachers they should be assigned to schools in a fair and Equitable manner based on students needs or School needs rather than teachers personal preferences so yes a teacher would like to work in a you know more uh like developed regions but those students need them in different places so we have to find a balance and a fair manner to distribute this this teachers and I think with that I conclude my presentation and I would be very happy to hear your comments and if y
ou have any questions I would be happy to hear them foreign thank you so much Becker that was very nice a very Illuminating presentation for me and I'm sure the audience share the same thoughts um yeah so this is now um our question and answer time so any questions please do raise your hand so we can notice you in this participant list also if you have a question um you can write that on the chat box and I can read that from out loud in fact we have one question during the presentation that came
from um I could usterk who is asking do we know what proportion of students are enrolled across these four types of high schools I think that was referring specifically to either slide number two or three or uh I noticed the question came quite early those two questions right do we know what proportional students are enrolled across different uh or these four types of high schools let me go back to that slide and then we can talk uh like about two three percent of students go to science high sc
hools so they are really uh you know like considered as successful students and those students are really considered as you know very selective schools which are considered as religious high schools about 10 percent of our high school students go to imamative schools the the proportion is around 10 percent and regular high schools about uh more than 30 close to 40 percent of our students go to this you know regular Anatolian high schools and Vocational High is around close to 40 percent and we h
ave also other like smaller types of high schools which I did not list or over here for the sake of simplicity right thank you thank you so much um again if you have more questions please either raise your hand or type on the chat box so um yes Mikey I just saw that you raise your hand first yes thank you for this interesting uh presentation so if I understood this correctly so so you still have Central exams and standards testing but even despite those standardized testing you see a huge inequa
lity in the type of high school that people are entering and that's kind of strange because International comparative research is always saying that in those countries with standardized testing the system would be more fair because yeah teachers can't play their uh expectations for example in giving advice so we and Founders we don't have any standardized testing yet so we don't have any Central exams uh they're working on it and so one of the the arguments they're using is that those standardiz
ed tests will be more far more objective and so therefore we could yeah get rid of the social inequality which is quite large in our system too so you've seen the pizza data we're Fortune between school differences so we have kind of of the same uh situation and inequality so I was wondering what is your explanation for the fact that even though you have those standardized testing there's still that huge social inequality due to people who game the system for example or what's happening no becau
se as I I try to explain they have like different teachers who have different level of seniority so like the students with the most or disadvantages most disadvantages regions who need more you know professional teachers or who you know who need teachers with more experience they have the least experienced teachers so like there is a imbalance Regional imbalance in terms of like distribution of teachers with experience and we know from our studies uh like seniority teacher seniority has direct e
ffect on student achievement there is one I think reason uh also another reason is this students do not have equal chances of uh you know like uh opportunity in terms of uh preparing themselves for this centralized exams so those families with the most resources who have uh like like they have they can afford to send their kids to private schools or private tutoring centers which we have so many in Turkey so those families from the especially like um like from the mid level in mid-income level o
r upper income level they send their kids to a private tutoring centers they take private uh you know lessons for their kids so they have like they become more successful so uh like making an objective test or making an objective exam for these students does not make the system Fair because students do not have equal opportunity to you know for preparation for this kind of exams so like of course there are different options for this like policy options you may you may say that yes objective test
s are a good and valid you know predictor or valid you know like factor in admitting students so why not providing more resource to all students why not providing more like pests or booklets to uh so kids so that they can prepare two exams and this is the current policy of the ministry of National Education but I don't think it will work I don't think it will work because the the in like inequality is so huge it cannot be compensated by this kind of like incremental policies uh I think we have t
o decrease the number of these uh exam schools we have to decrease the number yes we can keep like a certain uh number of them like maybe one percent two percent it's a matter of policy we can discuss this like it could be five percent Etc but right now the problem is since 10 percent of the students in 2018 and now 16 of students go to these schools the rest of the school as considered as uh unqualified or unsuccessful and those kids are being labeled as such that this is a big big problem I th
ink I mean like labeling effect uh is really a major problem and we have to be very careful because these are uh like 15 years of kids and we see a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy because those students go to like a school which considered as not very a quality School [Music] as such and this is I think a very problematic situation and I haven't presented over here but we we have also made several qualitative studies and our qualitative studies uh show that uh like there is de facto curriculum
differentiation among schools so if you go to a selective School you see a more challenging curriculum but if you go to adjust a regular school you see just a relaxed you know version of curriculum and that makes you less uh like prepared for you know University entrance examination but again uh like we need I think more as you are right I mean we need more International comparative studies and also we need more studies using our national data no thank you that's no confirmation of what I though
t was happening so a bit very Illuminating thank you thank you well thank you and now we have questions from chetin thank you um can you hear me yes well thank you very much for the presentation that was really excellent so I have been working on the issue for some time uh I have a couple of questions actually just one comment before my questions relating to Micah's point I guess standardized exams by Nature are bad but their timing is also pretty critical so the early standardized test create c
reates or generates really bad results because the earlier the standardized exam is the the higher the effects of the socioeconomic resources of the family on the students achievement I guess your graphs already prove that so uh I have a couple of uh questions first um um yeah the use of teaching it's it's it seems that this is really critical but the provinces you mentioned they are also Kurdish populated provinces so I'm really wondering uh how would you reflect on that because this is a stand
ardized test pretty early and some of these students who are residing in this Kurdish populated cities are coming from the households in which Kurdish is spoken so in these tests they are trying to compete with the Turkish counterparts at quite early age do you think that would be sort of affecting their academic success or placement in in those standardized tests and another one the the recent so how to say the recent reform regarding this standardized test as far as I remember uh imposes that
students can be sorted into if they are not able to collect good enough grades they can be sorted into the schools they are existing which are existing in their neighborhoods which basically means if you are coming from a poor socioeconomic background then you are residing in a poor neighborhood then you would have to go to the School in your poor neighborhood which would really reproduce the inequalities so I'm wondering how would you how would you uh think on that do you think it's really beca
use you said theok theok is worse but do you think this is better than teoc or worse than tail I'm really curious about your um your opinion and my last question about the voucher system yes you say that Turkish State defines itself as a welfare state but with the strengthening of the knowledgeable policies we see that the government also designed voucher system so if students are preferring to go to the private schools as far as I know private schools are able to get vouchers by the number of s
tudents or per students so did you have a chance to sort of place of this increasing number of private schools you know in your data thank you very much thank you and uh like you have like three different questions you have asked three different questions and uh like let me start with voucher question yes you are right the number of private schools have been increasing in Turkey and government from time to time supported this private schools and if you remember in 2013 and 14 uh government suppo
rted this transition from private tutoring centers into private high schools so that they wanted to make uh you know like uh dependency on these private tutoring centers in a more like controlled way so they wanted to decrease the dependency on this you know private tutoring centers so Watcher had very specific purpose at that time and now some like supporting systems have been continued but not uh as that much as far as I know yes uh the reasoning behind this uh had some neoliberal logic within
that because at that time if you remember some of the governmental spokespersons said that uh like we wanted to alleviate uh the dependency on public school system we that's why we we sent uh we we want to support those students who would like to go to private schools yes they had some but in terms of the like Constitution and in terms of the you know public legitimacy I think still uh like Turkish education system uh when we like talk with officials or when we discuss this issue publicly still
it's considered as a kind of like uh public uh you know like uh kind of uh like social welfare states as far as you know like a in general public perception and you had like second question related with the neighborhood effect yes this is a a very problematic situation because uh we we see that a dependency on the standardized exam creates inequality but dependency on neighborhood creates another Inequality For Those students coming from less affluent backgrounds that's why I think we need some
selective schools for all students but I am talking about whether this should be like 10 percent 20 percent or 100 percent and as far as I can see from you know our studies we have to really keep into a very uh small like two percent or five percent so that students who go to the other types of schools still can have like peers who are considered as successful so we need a more positive uh School climate over there but if we just uh like uh select all the successful students and put them into c
ertain schools and the rest of the schools have just unsuccess students I think which is very bad policy and it has a very uh you know negative effects also for these neighborhoods uh we need a better teachers uh more you know like with more and seniority again we come to the point in which our current public assignment policy for teachers I think is very bad it doesn't take into consideration of equality or inequality so we have to make some changes uh over there because many studies shows that
the quality of teachers is the maybe number one factor in which we can uh you know change or we can make some policies about it and your again your first question relates with the language disadvantages you are right those regions which are less developed regions are also Kurdish populated areas and uh not from our national studies but from International Studies such as Pisa we know that those students who doesn't talk Turkish in their homes have a lower you know scores in this type of Assessme
nts and yes I am sure there should be some connection between there but the problem is uh like officially uh as you may know Turkish Statistical Institute doesn't ask this question you know yes language you talk in in your home so we had uh I think a problem regarding data but this is a policy area that we have to I think work on this is a big I think area of uh concern I agree with you thank you you're welcome thank you for the question and thank you for the expansion back here by the way if yo
u feel like uh stop sharing your screen okay it's something that you can do if you want to so we have more time for questions if you have any questions please do raise your hands I think there's is there a hand raised somewhere I don't know um if not then maybe I could School in one question um so to me it seems to me that everything that you presented here is quite a good example of showing how rich gets richer in any kind of context and and your study was really interesting in terms of not onl
y in one aspect but pretty much in every aspect that you looked at it as a confirmation that rich gets richer and there's this particularly true for Turkish education system too so where do you think that there might be break into this system I mean you had pretty um thought-provoking questions at the very end of your presentation at the end of the slide so I'm just wondering what is it that we might do or turkey might do uh to to break this system somehow because any inequity study should adopt
step-by-step approach we're not going to change the system all in once and everything is going to be fine the next day so what is the breaking point you think that we can find um we can make some progress towards Pro a more Equitable system yeah I think I mean public has huge trans trust in this objective standardized exams uh and I think that's float so we have to change that perception so we have to bring more data and we have to start a discussion public discussion on this topic because peop
le think that when we have this kind of objective tests uh our system works in a fair way but all of the data shows the otherwise and so I think we need more discussion about this topic like from a comparative perspective as you may know like in the United States there are huge debates about this you know whether these tests objective tests are fair or not and there are a huge literature over there and there are different systems in place like for instance in Texas uh like if a student according
to their grades if a student is in the top 10 percent of he his or her high school then he is automatically being admitted to a university or a college of his or her preference so this is a way showing that there are some solutions possible without you know like necessary linked with a standardized test and according to uh like studies conducted in Texas about this uh like plasma placement scheme the result shows that uh in terms of socio-economic status the results are more positive so like th
e students from coming from lower socioeconomic status families they have more chance with this system so I think we need a way for that those two course which are in like more uh like poor neighborhoods they can also have more chance to go to a selective college or selective University so in order to for in order for us to do that we have to show public that grades could be designed in a way which we can trust those grades they are valid predictors Etc so I think we need that discussion about o
f about the role of grades and the role of exams in creating a fair education system yeah yeah thank you agreed I mean um more I guess outlets for graduates as well could also be something you know just not necessarily a four-year Bachelor degrees but more different options I guess or opportunities you know it could be something as you know in Turkey like we have like uh Walla dictarians students like those students who are uh like at the top of their high schools they can be placed in universit
ies uh by considering their scores and they have like a special quota for them they can compete with each other so all the walled Italians from the different high schools compete for those quotas but again the problem is all these students are valedictorian students but uh they have to uh have good grades in uh I'm sorry they have to have good scores in National exams again the placement is based on National exams so we have to create some other ways so that people can use standardize exam but a
s well as grades nowadays in in our University entrance examination about 90 percent of our points coming from the standardized part so the grades is around like seven percent or so which is very small yeah um Jonathan has a question um thank you thank you so much that was such an interesting um presentation and um yeah I've learned learned an awful lot about the uh the Turkish education system thank you um I had a question about the between school variants and we talked about that a little bit
already um especially in relation to the the high school The Vocational High Schools and um and how they were different and I guess my question is to do with some of the other studies that you you've done so you mentioned that you've done other qualitative studies um but potentially quantitative as well um do you have a sense I guess the outcomes and the variance in terms of the outcomes assumes that all those who go to certain high schools want to achieve a bachelor so for example the big diffe
rential between at the vocational schools of those not going on to Bachelors I guess my question as I was listening was well do they want to do that I mean we're sort of assuming that everybody wants to go and do a bachelor's degree but they might be perfectly happy being in a Vocational High School and going and do vocational courses or whatever and so I'm just interested in whether any of your other Studies have have picked up the yeah what what students or pupils desire to do and and how this
matches with that either qualitative or quantitative I guess yeah I agree I mean your comments and we haven't done any study for this purpose but I can comment uh on this like students go to vocational schools as a last resort most of the time so those students who cannot be placed into science high schools or Anatolian high schools they go to Vocational High Schools so this is not really a decision or informed decision this is a kind of Last Resort a chance for them so this is a problematic I
mean yes you are right I mean if students work willingly going to vocational schools and like placement tests for bachelor programs is low that's okay that's not a big deal and it should be that way because the aim of the program is not uh to place graduates into you know bachelor programs uh but most of the time like uh like people choose and I am saying people because the preference of high schools is not a matter for just that children you know that those children yeah it's a familial matter
you know like uh students and families together decide which schools they go to and considering their age they are like 14 years of age or 15 years of age when they go to you know high schools of course this is a familial decision and uh like most of the literature and say stay you know they go to more academic schools if they are able to if not then they go to a vocational schools and this is a trap for vocational school as well because those students who go to vocational schools are considered
as not very able students not very successful students this is also not good for those schools because if they were going to those schools by their choice like perhaps their perception their self-perception would be much better so this is uh this is something that the current like Ministry of National Education tries to create they want to create a more positive image of you know vocational schools I think this is a right policy but I think it has limitations because like a higher education sys
tem or like going into a selective higher education program creates more pressure from the above yeah I suppose like Murat was saying in terms of the what are the solutions and I guess part of that is the the shift in discourse around the different kinds of um outcomes that people could have or trajectories into into which they go um you know you take someone like Germany um there's a piracy of esteem when it comes to vocational courses compared to academic or there's at least there's more towar
ds that and so I guess some of it is around and Shifting the the way in which we we think about our frame vocational and academic um outcomes yes and education I think we've got another question um from furcon hello everyone can't hear me yes all right perfect thank you very much because I'm for this top program uh seminar and very good uh findings that shed light off inequalities to transition to higher education or before even secondary education so I think uh we are in the discussions that re
minds me that I think those things partly touches the uh centralist government of Education in Turkey you know because uh we didn't see any enough negotiations or discussions before implementing any policy like you mentioned lots of policy change so and you said also uh those kind of um kind of studies help to publicize to the discussions um do you think it's the way to kind of put pressure on postmakers or do you think is there any kind of structural changes needed to make the system more democ
ratized that they're done centralized because um you know as you checking out yourself for example well students go earlier to the system it will be my inequalities huge when you know students go earlier so um this is I think um for for syllable before this policy implementing this policy you know making uh restricted like 10 percent of students to go schools and all the results like uh inequalities on labeling you mentioned can be on for can be foreseeable but we didn't see any discussion so I
would like to hear your opinion on that issue thank you very much thank you I mean I agree with you I mean the the problem is actually uh like the root problem is related with the way our system is structured we have very centralized system with limited Authority for uh District level or School level decision making and we see this from like pizza studies when we like look at like a distribution of authority from top to bottom we see that all of the like authorities uh are at the top in Turkish
case and uh like maybe Greece is similar to Turkey but apart from that none of those City countries is uh like having this kind of centralized system but the problem is this uh in Turkish case uh at least from like uh last 150 years from tanzimat era to today okay many things have been centralized and a centralized system has a huge public legitimacy again people think that instead of like giving power to Regions or cities let's keep at the uh you know like National level or Central level uh aga
in we have to change this perception unless we change this perception we cannot uh like uh change the system because people think that like when you give authority to Regions or districts or sugos they will abuse it okay so they don't trust to those people who are going to use their power so we need to change that perception and uh but let me also State this fact you know we know in the world there are uh like good systems with centralized structures we know good systems with decentralized struc
tures and we also know that bad systems with centralized structures or decentralized structures so my point is this I mean yes uh I think in Turkish case we need more decentralization uh but still even if we keep continuing your decentralized system we can run it better we are not running it better you know as you said like we we changed our system so many times in a relatively short time uh and uh like like when you go to the website of the ministry you cannot see any like public uh like uh rep
orts for many of these systems you know like why we we are making this change you know like you will see kind of like white paper or green paper or you know this kind of stuff in many countries and you have to see that you know like uh people should be accountable to what they have done you know you put your uh targets you put your methods and you put your results and then you can compare all of this and then you say you know what we have done has been successful or not so I think we need more e
valuation studies of this you know policy studies uh which I don't think we have enough of them thanks very much yeah I think it's part of bigger uh discussion about you know uh public and uh government and public relations between them so uh yeah thank you very much thank you well thanks a lot um so we still have time for questions if anybody has any questions it was indeed a very um informative for me like at a lot to learn actually foreign but if you do not have any question I think uh we can
conclude in here and would like to thank back here again um for presenting uh over here and it was a very um very nice presentation and a very lovely discussion so can we all in our own way um Club take care for his presentations that was that was very nice thank you so um in the closing uh moments of this seminar again thank you uh take care so let me talk about the next seminar that we have the next seminar is going to be on Wednesday 8th February 2023 and will be presented by Priscilla echev
eria de la Iglesia and um the title is the pedagogical agency capacity in those teachers the responsibility of initial teacher for information programs from a critical perspective so hopefully you will be able to make into that um seminar series as well so the details will be on our department website and thank you again for coming and joining and once more thank you Baker for um Coming and presenting thanks so much thank you Murad thank you Jonathan and thank melis for invitation thank you
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