国际英语新闻:Spotlight: Turkish experts call for long-term vision for education system

ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- As frequent and radical changes in Turkey's education system have taken their toll on students who scored poorly in university entrance exams this year, experts are urging the government to adopt a long-term vision to correct this disappointing situation.

"The results of the centralized university exams don't let us be hopeful for the future of the country. We need to put a sound diagnosis to this situation in order to heal our education system," said Abbas Guclu, an education specialist, in his column in Milliyet Daily.

He was referring to official statistics announced last week regarding the much-debated exam taken by hundreds of thousands of students each year to enter universities across Turkey.

The results are very disappointing. On average, students got five correct answers out of 24 questions on Turkish literature, four out of 21 on history, 4.75 out of 40 on mathematics, just one out of 14 on physics, 0.9 out of 13 on chemistry and finally 1.2 out of 13 on biology.

Pointing out especially the very poor performances in scientific studies, Guclu said the blame is either on the education system or the exam system, calling on authorities to act swiftly to change the overall system for better results.

"This is not a brilliant picture and tells that the decline in the quality of the education is still ongoing. One of the key reasons for this collapse is the lack of a long-term vision and constant changes in the system driven by political motivations," Serkan Demirtas, a political analyst and journalist, told Xinhua.

He argued that the problem is structural and includes insufficient qualified teachers and an outdated curriculum.

"Families who can afford it are enrolling their children in private institutions or foreign schools with hopes for a good education and future," while the ordinary citizen has to put up with frequent changes to the system that parents and students alike are not comprehending, Demirtas noted.

However, the poor scores at the university exams are certainly a result of the fact that Turks do not read, at least not a great number of volumes in their entire lifetime, revealed by surveys.

According to the latest study conducted nationwide by the ministry of education, 66 percent of Turkish students scored "mediocre" or below in reading comprehension.

The poor reading scores were revealed by the results of the Monitoring and Evaluating Academic Skills (ABIDE) project, carried out on some 116,000 pupils across the country.

The project also demonstrated that Turkish students proved to be inadequate in performing the most basic operations in mathematics.

The findings were in line with those of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) which in 2017 reported that Turkey ranked 49th in mathematics, 52nd in sciences and 50th in reading among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

A comparison of Turkey's scores in PISA in 2017, 2015 and 2012 point to a downward trend in almost all fields.

In May, the education ministry introduced a new education model that will reform high schools. Starting from the 2020-2021 academic year, middle and high schools will undergo a string of changes, including fewer class hours and elective courses.

They have, however, brought new challenges to a system which, some observers argue, lacks critical thinking and lags behind European countries.

"The new school year will start in September, but there are still some unspecified areas that have not been revealed to us, so we are still expecting some instructions by the ministry," a senior geography teacher from Ankara said on condition of anonymity.