|
His Excellency Minister of National Education
Hüseyin Çelik,
Members of the Parliament
Ambassadors and Distinguished Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good evening and Welcome to Ministry of
National Education.
My name is İbrahim Özdemir, DG for Foreign Affairs.
We are honored with your presence here this evening. We want to host you and also provide an informal platform to meet our Minister and Policy Makers in the field of education. As you know, Turkey has pursued a striking education reform in recent years under the leadership of His Excellency Çelik. This evening, his Excellency will share with you the recent developments and reforms since 2003.
As our Minister very often underlines, we consider education as the cornerstone and heart of development, security, prosperity, peace, and democracy.
I just came from OECD's CERI (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation) Meetings last night. It was a happy coincidence for us to see that this week OECD also published a book titled Basic Education in Turkey that is prepared by OECD experts. It is the first book in recent decades published by OECD regarding our education system.
We owe this book to our Minister's sincere and encouraging attitude. He instructed us to invite OECD experts to visit Turkey and prepare a country report regarding basic education. When he met OECD team in 2004, he told them to take a realistic picture of our education. Now, we have the picture. Yes, we admit that our system is not perfect. More importantly, we can see the whole picture, its defects and problems as well. But let me remind you that, we know how to solve them, too.
Let me take to opportunity and invite His Excellency Çelik to the floor. Mr. Minister the floor is yours.
Thank you.
Ibrahim Ozdemir, Ph.D.
Director-General
Ministry of National Education
Department of Foreign Affairs
|
