Press Centre 2005/04/04: Girls’ Education
Girls at School Now!
Umay Aktaş, Radikal Newspaper, 4 April 2005
Thanks to the campaign, the gender gap in primary school enrolment has been closed by 15%. MONE now aims to enrol a further 250,000 girls in school. Although the current figures may be encouraging, 566,798 girls still need to be enrolled.
The Haydi Kızlar Okula! and 100% Support for Education campaigns have begun to yield results. Since 2003, 9,294 new classrooms have been phased-in and thousands of schools have been restored.
İstanbul -- MONE is now trying to develop solutions with a fresh approach to the most pressing education problems in the country. Within two years of launching the Haydi Kızlar Okula! and 100% Support for Education campaigns, MONE has made significant strides forward. The gender gap in primary school enrolment narrowed by 15% and 113,000 girls in 53 provinces enrolled to schools. 9,294 new classrooms were created with private funding.
MONE and UNICEF decided to act in 2003 on behalf of girls who could not start school for various reasons including economic hardship, early marriage, the absence of classroom space for 6th, 7th and 8th grades in rural primary schools and the traditional parental bias towards educating boys. The first phase of the campaign focused on Ağrı, Batman, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkâri, Muş, Siirt, Şanlıurfa, Şırnak and Van as provinces where enrolment in school was considerably lower for girls than national averages. Provincial governors, National education Directors and teachers visited families at home to speak with parents who were keeping their daughters away from school.
40,000 Girls in Two Years
Within two years there was a 5.8% increase in the girls’ enrolment with 40,000 children in ten provinces enrolled in school with Siirt and Van proving to be the most successful provinces. In the second year, the campaign was expanded to cover another 23 provinces including İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Adana where rural-to-urban migration has been intensive. Another 73,211 girls in these 23 provinces made their way to classrooms for the first time.
About 4,000 girls in İstanbul enrolled in school with Bağcılar and Kartal proving to be the most successful districts in İstanbul. Provincial Education Director Ömer Balıbey commented:
There are about 9,000 girls out of school and we are in contact with 2,000 of these children. We are trying to convince parents by making visits to homes and offering financial assistance. A fine of 780YTL is imposed on those who resist and keep their daughters out of school. Migration is the greatest problem of all. We are aiming to school or re-school 4,000 more girls before the end of this year. While we are working hard to send girls to school, many more are coming in with their migrating families.
Target: 250,000 Girls
The Haydi Kızlar Okula! campaign continues throughout 2005 covering another 20 provinces. The target is to reach 250,000 girls and enrol them for education next year. However promising these figures may be, the data provided by MONE points out that 566,798 girls still need to be enrolled.
135,000 Classrooms Needed
Another MONE initiative targets the solution of the problem of crowded and combined classes and school buildings in poor physical conditions. The tax reduction that is offered to those making contributions to education was raised from 5 to 100% when the project was launched in 2003. There are now efforts to mobilise the support of the private sector and non-govermental organisations. About 135,000 classrooms are needed countrywide in order to have single-shift schooling in classes of no more than 30 pupils at a time. The campaign may be in it’s infancy yet, but nevertheless, 666 school buildings and 9,294 classrooms in 101 annex buildings could be phased-in within two years. The number of schools restored so far is 4,466.
İstanbul is one of the provinces holding the banner highest in the 100% Support for Education campaign. 102 protocols for school building have been enacted so far and 1,400 new classrooms are now in service. The contribution to the campaign by citizens reached 120 trillion TL. Stating that there is classroom gap of 15,000 only in İstanbul, education Director Balıbey adds that 5,000 of this figure will be covered within this year.
Tax Support is Important
Balıbey explains the boom in the campaign by pointing to the significance of tax reduction:
Each year btween seventy and eighty thousand new students arrive in İstanbul. This means we need 3,000 new classrooms every year: 1,500 for those newcomers and 1,500 for routine demographic growth.
A New Campaign
Turkey is one of the 12 countries in the world that has yet not realised gender equality and runs the risk of not being able to do so until 2015. Ethiopia, India, Mongolia and Iraq are among the others. According to information provided by the publications of the Initiative for Reform in Education, 1.4 million children of school age are not attending and 874,000 of them are girls. In Turkey, one in every eight girls is deprived of the right to education. A project developed jointly by the Mother and Child Education Foundation (AÇEV), the Initiative for Education Reform (ERG) and the Association for Supporting Female Candidates (KADER) aims to eliminate gender inequalities in social participation.
Financed by the EU, preliminary work on the project has begun and it will be implementated in September this year. The project, which will run in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Mardin, Şanlıurfa and İstanbul, will also support the Girls’ Education campaign. The target is to reach 16,000 citizens.
Download the latest update on Haydi Kızlar Okula! in pdf format. [PDF 404KB]
Read more about Haydi Kızlar Okula! in our Programmes section. The full text of the Provincial Governors’ Declaration in support of Haydi Kızlar Okula! can be found in the UNICEF Turkey Press Centre.
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OTHER PRESS RELEASES ON GIRLS’ EDUCATION ISSUES
- Head of Religious Affairs, Ali Bardakoğlu calls for imams to include the issue of girls’ education in their sermons.
- The Haydi Kızlar Okula! campaign to increase enrolment rates for girls in primary education gains momentum in the eastern and south-eastern regions.
- Governor Temel Koçaklar underlined the success achieved in getting girls into school in Mardin through the Haydi Kızlar Okula! campaign.
- In a survey launched under the UNICEF campaign to support girls’ education, it was found that 4,068 girls in İzmir and its vicinity were not enrolled at school for various reasons.
- The Governorate of İzmir launched a campaign to ensure girls’ primary school enrolment by changing the attitude of their parents.
- Twenty-five committed teachers in Bingöl went without their summer holidays in order to meet parents who were not sending their daughters to school and help change their minds.
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