Education Minister Yusuf Tekin assessed Türkiye’s performance in the 2025 PISA results, saying the improvement achieved by the country, particularly after 2015, had drawn the attention of international education circles.
Speaking at Anadolu Agency’s Editors’ Desk, Tekin said they held an online meeting with the PISA administration about 15 days before the 2025 PISA results were announced. Tekin said Türkiye’s performance after 2015 was a particular focus of the meeting.
“Türkiye Is Showing an Extraordinary Level of Achievement”
Tekin said the PISA administration told him that Türkiye’s performance had begun to improve after 2015 and asked Türkiye to explain this process to other countries. Minister Tekin said this observation was particularly important to him.
According to the Education Ministry’s statement on September 8, Tekin said that OECD long-term analyses showed Türkiye was the only OECD country to achieve a significant improvement in all three PISA domains during the 2015–2025 period.
Tekin Linked the Change After 2015 to the Tutoring-Center Reform
Assessing the change in Türkiye’s performance, Tekin drew attention to the tutoring-center reform introduced in 2014. He recalled that, at the time, it was argued that private tutoring centers had created a form of “tutelage mechanism” over the Education Ministry’s schools, teachers, textbooks and curricula.
Tekin described this structure as “FETÖ tutelage” and said it had created the perception among students and parents that the education provided in schools was inadequate and that private tutoring centers were necessary for success. He argued that, after this structure was dismantled, the Education Ministry’s influence over the education system increased.
He Highlighted Four Factors
At Anadolu Agency’s Editors’ Desk, Tekin was asked whether the rise in PISA performance could be explained by four factors: “the removal of FETÖ tutelage, the renewal of the curriculum, the expansion of the teacher workforce and the improvement of physical capacity.” Tekin answered, “Yes.”
The minister also said that Support and Training Courses were launched in schools in 2014, and that some education services previously obtained by students from private tutoring centers began to be offered free of charge at schools.
Target Is a Top-Five Ranking Among OECD Countries
In a separate assessment in Bratislava following the 2025 PISA results, Tekin said the targets for future PISA studies were to rank among the top five OECD countries and make the performance achieved permanent.
Tekin therefore attributed Türkiye’s rise in PISA performance not only to measures implemented in the past few years, but also to a series of changes made to the education system since the mid-2010s. This causal interpretation reflects Minister Tekin’s assessment; the PISA results themselves do not, on their own, prove that a specific policy caused the improvement.
