Turkey lags behind OECD average in education despite improvements
This view is from a classroom in a Turkish school in İstanbul. (Photo: Today’s Zaman)
The findings of a comprehensive report on education prepared by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reveal that Turkey lags behind the average for OECD countries, although there have been improvements in the overall level of education in the country.
The study, titled “Education at a Glance,” is the product of a long-standing collaborative effort between the OECD governments, featuring data on education from the 34 OECD member countries, two partner countries that participate in the OECD Indicators of Education Systems (INES) program -- Brazil and Russia -- and other partner countries that do not participate in INES, such as Argentina, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
In 2012, in terms of the percentage of adults between the ages of 25-64 with a tertiary education, the OECD average was above 30 percent, while Turkey stood at above 15 percent, being only higher than China, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil.
The report found out that across the countries in question, about 75 percent of adults aged 25-64 have attained at least a high-school education; among 25-34-year-olds, about 80 percent have.
Among the 25-34-year-old cohort in the 2012 data, the percentage of adults who have achieved a tertiary education is almost at 40 percent within the OECD countries, while the figure in Turkey remains at around 20 percent. Data also show that less than 14 percent of 55-64-year-olds in Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Turkey do.
The OECD average percentage of populations with at least an upper secondary-level education is 75 percent while the same number is 34 in Turkey, in the 25-64 age group. The number is 77 on average in 21 European Union countries.
The “Education at a Glance” report also estimates that based on current patterns, an average of 84 percent of today's young people in OECD countries will complete an upper secondary education over their lifetimes, while in G20 countries, some 80 percent of young people will. However, expectations vary depending on the countries. In Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom, more than 90 percent of young people are expected to graduate from high school during their lifetime, but in Mexico and Turkey, less than 60 percent of people are expected to do so.
Despite lower-than-average expectations from Turkey, along with Spain, Turkey shows the highest average annual growth rates for upper secondary graduation -- considerably above the OECD average of 0.8 percent. The annual growth rate in Spain and Turkey exceeds 2 percent, while in Mexico the annual increase is more than 3 percent.
In terms of investment in education, Turkey also lags behind the OECD and EU average. Annual expenditure per student by educational institutions is 18 percent of GDP in Turkey, while the OCED and EU21 averages are 27 percent, based on 2011 figures.
In some countries, the difference in unemployment rates between adults with high and low levels of education is narrow or even inverted, the report indicates. In Brazil, Korea, Mexico and Turkey, for example, unemployment rates are higher among people with an upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education than for people with below upper secondary education.
Unemployment among women with tertiary education is particularly high in Greece and Turkey. For instance, in Turkey, 11 percent of tertiary-educated women were unemployed in 2012 compared to only 6 percent of tertiary-educated men (in Greece, 20 percent and 14 percent, respectively). However, across OECD countries, a tertiary-educated woman earns about 75 percent of what a similarly educated man earns; only in Belgium, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey do the earnings of tertiary-educated women amount to 80 percent or more of men's earnings.
When it comes to mathematics performance, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results show that Shanghai in China performs the highest mathematics all tested countries, well above the OECD average. Singapore, Hong Kong-China, Korea, Macao-China, Japan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and the Netherlands -- in descending order -- round out the top ten performers. Turkey ranks below the OECD average in mathematical performance, just behind and Serbia.
However, of the 39 countries and economies that participated in PISA exams in both 2003 and 2012, Mexico, Turkey and Germany improved both their mathematics performance during the period.