This project will support the Government’s ongoing reforms in VET through close collaboration with the EU-delegation in Ankara and the major stakeholders in education in Turkey. In addition, through the analytical work for the Human Resources Review special attention will be given to the ongoing labour market reforms and Turkey’s efforts to promote social inclusion. The report will be used as an input in the IPA-HRD programming process by DG-Employment in 2012.
Enhancing educational qualifications and skills are of pivotal importance to promote economic growth and individual earnings. Turkey’s Government is boosting the country’s human capital by investments in education, including VET, to improve the employability of the population. Business and education cooperation received a significant boost with the VET reform projects implemented since 2000s in Turkey (SVET and HRD-VET projects, respectively MEGEP and IKMEP projects in Turkish). Enhancement of investment in human capital by increasing the quality of education and training, improving the linkage between education and labour market through a partnership approach has been one of the priorities of the Human Resources Development Operational Plan 2007-2009 (the key strategic document to implement the component on Human Resources Development of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). A Vocational Qualification Authority has been set up and has started the work to establish a Turkish National Qualification Framework. Within the accession process to the EU, Turkey has recently prepared and adopted a “Lifelong Learning Strategy” document which was finalised by the Ministry of National Education in 2009. Broadly the strategy includes 16 priorities as key issues of action including curriculum improvement and update according to the changing needs of the country, and opening pathways (trans-routes) between all types and levels of education and between education and the world of work. The latter puts a new emphasis on school – business life – school transitions within the lifelong learning approach and encourages school and business cooperation and voices its extension beyond vocational and technical education. In higher education, progress has been made with the introduction of a qualifications framework and learning outcome approach. The Bologna Process has been the top priority on the agenda of the Council of Higher Education (CoHE) since Turkey’s involvement in the process in starting in 2001. The CoHE has translated the eight reference levels of the EQF as general descriptors for Higher Education qualifications. Turkey’s R&D expenditures increased from 0,54% of GDP in 2001 to 0,72 % of GDP in 2007 with an EU27 average of 1,85 % in 2007 (Eurostat Newsletter, 2009).
Important progress has been made as shown by the steady increase in net enrolments in secondary education from around 40% in 2000 to 65% (boys 67.6%, girls 62.2%) in 2009-2010. Last year a strong increase of more than 20% of students was observed in VET, which is 43% against 57% of students that follow general secondary education. Although gross and net enrolment in higher education have been growing at an annual rate of 8% in the last five years, only 1 out of 6 students pass the university entrance examination and the net enrolment rate in higher education in 2008-2009 was 27.7% (men 29.4%, women 25.9%) . It is expected that the growing participation in secondary education will continue to put a strong pressure to further expand access to higher education.
Despite these efforts Turkey is facing a number of challenges as the overall educational attainment levels of the working population are low compared to the EU25 or other candidate countries (e.g., nearly 60% of the labour force is composed of basic education graduates or people who dropped out from basic education). Problems related to access to education by gender, rural/urban residence and social background (such as enrolment, drop-out and graduation rates) still exist (12.5% of the population — 4.7% of men and 20.1% of women — is illiterate).
The project will be implemented through ETF’s participation in steering committees, the organization of seminars to promote the exchange of technical expertise and coordination and the elaboration of an HRD-review to be published in 2012. The project also benefits from the activities of ETF’s Regional projects on entrepreneurial learning, social inclusion through education and mutual learning in post-secondary VET, Quality Assurance and Adult learning.
ETF will capitalize on the ongoing activities in Turkey related to the NQF/EQF and decentralization and strengthen the coordination between the Ministry of Education and the Council of Higher Education with involvement of the Council of Europe.