Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin discussed education policies, international exams and curriculum changes at the AA Editors’ Desk. He said that the Directorate General for Measurement, Evaluation and Examination Services was established during Nabi Avcı’s tenure to monitor alignment with the OECD and PISA, and that the ABİDE system was introduced to track developments between the three-year international exam cycles. Tekin said PISA Governing Board Chair Andreas had asked him to explain Türkiye’s rising performance since 2015 to other countries on September 8, arguing that the closure of private tutoring centers contributed to this improvement. He said the 2014 regulations required private education courses to use curricula approved by the Board of Education and Discipline, while free DYK courses were launched in schools. Tekin said the curriculum had been gradually streamlined since 2013; that the Türkiye Century Education Model, introduced in 2024, aimed to promote analytical assessment and everyday life skills rather than memorization; and that it would be implemented at all levels next year. He reported that the secondary education attendance rate had risen from around 50% in 2002 to more than 90% today, while access to preschool education had increased from 11% to more than 80%; he also said some teachers overused mobile phones in the classroom.
Why it matters
The Ministry’s monitoring of PISA and ABİDE together points to an assessment framework aimed at tracking students’ progress during the three-year intervals between exams, alongside international comparisons. The link drawn between the closure of private tutoring centers and improved achievement directly concerns students, parents and teachers in terms of the results of free DYK courses and the curriculum requirement imposed on private courses. However, the statements do not reveal how the impact of these measures on the improvement was distinguished from that of other education policies. Extending the curriculum to all levels raises the question of how the goals of analytical assessment and everyday life skills will be measured in classroom practices and exams. While the relationship between rising access rates and educational outcomes is another issue that needs to be monitored, the incomplete section on teachers’ mobile phone use is insufficient for a sound assessment.
Background
Modeli is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: over the past 90 days, we published 13 news stories mentioning this name; the latest was dated September 14, 2026.