President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a speech at a ceremony in Ankara marking the start of the new academic year that Türkiye's rise in the rankings in the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA 2025, was a source of pride.
Erdoğan said Türkiye has a successful young generation that can use technology effectively. Despite the promotion of pessimistic scenarios, he said, the country is raising successful young people who follow developments around the world and have command of technology.
Erdoğan said Türkiye increased its performance in the PISA 2025 program by 50% and was the only country to achieve significant improvement. Noting that 91 countries participated in PISA 2025, Erdoğan said Türkiye recorded the largest score increase among OECD countries in science, mathematics and reading skills.
Erdoğan also said that, in terms of equal opportunity, Türkiye was the only OECD country to improve the performance of both its most advantaged and most disadvantaged student groups.
Changes in the education budget
Erdoğan said successive governments had given special importance to education since taking office, adding that everything begins with education and that shortcomings in other areas would persist without it.
Erdoğan said education accounted for 7.6% of the central budget in 2002, ranking fourth, while education spending had ranked first in the budget over the past 24 years. He said this share would reach 15.33% in 2026.
Number of classrooms increases
Erdoğan said the number of classrooms in Türkiye stood at 343,000 in 2002 and had risen to 626,000 today.
Erdoğan argued that some groups were trying to overshadow achievements that should make society happy. He said the Türkiye Century Education Model aimed to raise a generation capable not only of memorizing information but also of using it.
