Turkey: Surplus Preachers’ Schools Must Be Closed!

Highlights from the statement of TUSIAD include:
•Because the vocational and technical education system fails to fulfill its function adequately, university is perceived as the sole option. This results in accumulation in front of university.
•Providing higher education in a different field for those who graduate from the vocational school, whose costs to the state are much higher than regular schools, causes a serious waste of sources.
•The Preachers’ Schools were initially set up as vocational schools but lost this quality in time. (For example, these schools started recruiting girls who can not preach) . Therefore the number of these must be limited with the demand for preachers.
•Those willing to continue their education in their field (theology) must be enabled to do so. The surplus IHLs must be converted into regular high schools.
•The motion changing the status of IHLs must not be prepared and launched in haste.

In its written statement, the “Club of Bosses” stressed that a necessary number of the Preachers’ Schools should be maintained and the rest should be converted into regular high schools and the graduates of the Preachers’ Schools should be able to continue their education at university level, in their field, without having any exam.
TUSIAD stressed that the Preachers’ Schools were designed as vocational schools but they lost their this quality, in practice.