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Response to Covid-19 during the school year 2020-2021 (as in April 2021)
The published results of the EBA Monitoring and Assessment Survey for the TRT EBA and EBA platform, a distance learning channel in Turkey, are now available on the official website of the Ministry.
The questionnaire, applied to 1400 participants, was conducted in 12 Turkish provinces for primary, middle, and high schools’ teachers, students, and parents. The survey focuses on participants who follow live courses, digital education, and transition to face-to-face learning.
According to the research results reported by Minister Selçuk, 98.9% of teachers and 99.1% of students who benefit from the content prepared by the Ministry find it useful. Within the framework of the digital education process, the availability rate of the content offered in EBA has increased by 8.3% compared to the previous year, rising to 83.3%.
In the study, where the comparison on the transition to distance learning was made in 2020 and based on this year's data, 52.9% of parents, students and teachers found EBA "sufficient" and 28.5% "very sufficient", only 18.6% considered it insufficient. It was identified that students finding TRT EBA TV videos "more interesting" increased by 44.5% compared to the previous year and reached 93.5%, while the proportion of parents finding the lesson videos broadcast on TRT EBA more understandable increased by 41.4% compared to the previous year. The proportion of students doing homework increased by 16% to 95%, the number of students repeating live topics after class improved by 14.6% to 93.6%, while the number of teachers considering digital teaching as an alternative to face-to-face teaching rose by 74.6% to 89%, and finally the number of teachers supporting face-to-face training increased by 38.5% to 76.5%.
On the other hand, the opening of schools to face-to-face teaching, in Turkey, has gradually begun since 2 March 2021. The epidemiological conditions of each region are carefully monitored and taken into account. The Minister of National Education, Ziya Selçuk, commented on the situation regarding face-to-face education: "More than 80% of primary school students attend face-to-face education, attendance in secondary schools is 76% and around 70% in high schools,". Stressing that the Ministry aims to continue face-to-face education with a high attendance rate, Selçuk stated: "We want to continue face-to-face education with a higher attendance of students. As soon as the conditions are normalised, our priority will certainly be face-to-face teaching."
Response to Covid-19 during the school year 2020-2021
In Turkey, face to face education will start for preschool and first-year students on September 21st, 2020. Students in each classroom will be divided into three groups. Each group will attend face to face education in their classrooms separately by daily turns.
The provision of face to face education for 8th and 12th grades will be re-evaluated three weeks after the September 21st milestone if everything goes well in preschool and first grades in these three weeks period.
Remote learning for all grades will continue through national broadcaster TRT's Education Information Network (EBA) channels and live courses of teachers from their schools or homes. Through EBA, all teachers can carry out live lessons. The number of live lessons given by teachers is planned by their school administrators.
In addition, during the new term, students will be able to develop their academic and social skills by downloading educational software and games apps prepared to improve their reading, comprehension, math, etc. skills.
EBA Support Point Areas have also been established in schools and various institutions to ensure students lacking a computer or internet access at home can still benefit from the courses. Some places in schools will be turned into EBA Support Points. Some buses will be also used as mobile EBA Support Points for rural schools.
Response to Covid-19 during the school year 2019-2020
In Turkey, the Ministry runs a digital education platform for teachers and students. EBA enables each teacher to have a virtual classroom, distribute learning tasks, and monitor each learner’s improvement based on personalised and collaborative learning. The EBA platform has been active in Turkey for almost 8 years and teachers have a wide variety of digital resources at their disposal. In these difficult times.
The Ministry has also made arrangements with the national TV Channel to present distance learning courses on a national education TV channel - EBA Channel. The EBA Channel for primary, EBA Channel for lower secondary, and EBA Channel for high school, present educational content and learning activities. Since Turkey has a centralised management system, the general approach followed is that teachers present lessons both in EBA Channels and EBA Platform, and classroom/subject teachers take the leadership in virtual classrooms.