Minister Avcı: Our students and parents should be at ease, we have taken the necessary precautions  
Minister Avcı: Our students and parents should be at ease, we have taken the necessary precautions

Minister Avcı: Our students and parents should be at ease, we have taken the necessary precautions

 Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı commented on the Constitutional Court verdict to annul the law on the conversion of the preparatory schools to private high schools and said “there is no official verdict that has reached the Ministry until this moment. Let the Constitutional Court release the preamble of the verdict, let us see why it has annulled certain articles and let us see clearly what has happened. Then as the Ministry of National Education we can share our views and we can tell the public what course of action we will take.” The Minister said all the necessary precautions have been taken and there is no room for students and parents to be alarmed or feel unease.

Minister Avcı: Our students and parents should be at ease, we have taken the necessary precautions

Minister of National Education Nabi Avcı replied to questions put to him by journalists on the decision of the Constitutional Court to annul some articles in the Basic National Education Law and the Laws and Decrees with the Power of Law that also included the conversion of preparatory schools to private high schools. 

Asked by a journalist whether the verdict to annul the closure of preparatory schools by September 1 and whether preparatory schools may now admit new students Minister Avcı replied “there is no verdict that has officially reached the Ministry up to this hour. Neither the preamble nor the verdict of the court has reached us. There are certain rumors and speculations. It would be mere speculation to make any statement on the seven articles that have been annulled by the court without seeing the preamble and the reasons for the annulment.

Minister Avcı went on to say “let the court announce the preamble and let us see why the articles have been annulled. We have to see why the court annulled some articles. Then we are prepared to share with the public the views of the Ministry.”

 

No students will be left in the open”

Saying students and their parents should be at ease Minister Avcı said “what we have to take care of are our students and parents. They should be at ease. No students will be left in the open. Our courses the supplement our students are underway and we will continue to enroll new students. We established a infrastructure at our schools for this and our teachers will meet the need.”

Touching upon the free supplementary courses Minster Avcı said ”teachers gave supplementary courses to our students at the schools last year as well. We will expand these courses extensively this year. Both neither the students nor their parents should feel any concern how and where they will get these supplementary courses.”

Minister Avcı said the Ministry of National Education has a B plan in view of the annulment verdict of the Constitutional Court and asked if a contingency law was drafted he replied “if you mean we are drafting a new law that will be processed through the Parliament we do not have such a draft. Such a law can only be brought to the agenda by those who took their appeal against the law to the court. We had our say by drafting and legislating the bill. But we have made secondary preparations regarding our regulations so that the students and their parents to meet their needs for supplementary lessons so that they do not become victims in this ordeal. We had planned and made all the preparations in case of any eventuality. Now let the court sent us the preamble and justification for the verdict and we will act accordingly. We can then discuss together what has to be done according to the justifications brought before us.”

 

“How did the Constitutional Court annul an article when it refused to halt its application a year ago is a mystery for me”

Saying the Ministry did not expect the Constitutional Court to come up with such a verdict “the court case was launched about more than a year ago. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) which took the case to the court also asked the court to halt its application. The court at the time rejected to stop the application of the law. Now it is a mystery for me on what grounds the court annulled a law which it allowed to be applied for a whole year. So we have to see the justifications in the preamble of the verdict to see why and how this annulment took place then we can talk about what we can do as standby measures.”

Minister Avcı recalled that he had discussed the conversion of the preparatory schools to private high schools with the representatives of the educational sector and added “last month in Istanbul we held a meeting with the representatives of associations, unions and associations involved in preparatory schools and private educational institutions where 70 percent of the sector was represented. They all thanked us for the cooperation we displayed during the conversion process. I again thank them at this point. We started this process together and we moved ahead together. Such steps will continue. Once the justifications for the verdict of the Constitutional Court are unveiled we can then get together with these representatives of the sector and discuss with them what contingency measures are needed. So at this point the representatives of the educational sector who cooperated with us should not feel any concern. We will continue to take into consideration their cooperation in the future.”

 

“No reason to be alarmed”

Asked by journalists whether preparatory schools will be allowed to enroll students in September Minister Avcı responded “once we see the justification of the court verdict we can sit down with the representatives of the sector who really want to be involved in education and we can create new solutions for every institution. Thus the private educational institutions, the parents and the students should not be alarmed. The Ministry of National Education has completed all the necessary infrastructure work to allow students receive supplementary lessons. We will continue with great determination and enthusiasm to provide supplementary lessons during weekend to help our students as we did in the past.”  

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