A Gender Review in Education, Turkey 2003 (10)

Analysis of Results (3)

Preliminary analysis reveals that schools need qualitative improvement such as a gender-sensitive curriculum and teacher-training processes.
Photograph by Sinem Akay © UNICEF Turkey 2003

Finance

Looking at the shares of MONE budget within GNP a slight increase can be observed from 1.7% in 1997 to 2.6% in 2002 which still falls short of covering need. Table 1 shows a comparison of these figures with some neighbouring countries and with some developed countries.

**Table 1:** Public Expenditure on Education as a percentage of GNP¹
Country	1985-1987	1995-1997
Turkey	1.2%	2.2%
Bulgaria	5.4%	3.2%
Syria	4.8%	4.2%
Iran	3.7%	4%
Greece	2.2%	3.1%
Spain	3.7%	5%
United Kingdom	4.8%	5.3%
United States of America	5%	5.4%
Norway	6.5%	7.7%

¹ The Human Development Report 2002 (HDR), pp178-179, UNDP, New York, 2002.

Conclusion

Analysis shows that the gender gap is apparent in all areas of education and that girls cannot benefit from educational services sufficiently. The problem lies mainly in rural areas of the eastern and southeastern provinces and squatter or gecekondular areas of urban centres.

Obviously a great deal has been achieved with the implementation of the Basic Education Programme particularly in relation to the physical condition of schools. However, there are still children -- particularly girls -- who face problems of access to schools not only because of physical distance but also due to financial and social barriers. There is also a severe deficiency of early childhood education irrespective of gender.

Preliminary analysis reveals that schools need qualitative improvement such as a gender-sensitive curriculum and teacher-training processes. Operational realities such as child labour (particularly domestic labour for girl children), opportunity and cost of education, illiterate parents and patriarchal values &c… remain to be addressed.

Continue to the eleventh part of A Gender Review in Education, Turkey 2003, Recommendations.

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