54 İstanbul prep schools seek private school status

Fifty-four prep schools in İstanbul have applied to become private schools after the Ministry of Education sent a letter to governors’ offices asking them to determine which university prep schools are suitable to serve as private schools, the Akşam daily reported on Sunday.
In response to remarks made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan en route to Seoul that university prep schools would either serve as proper schools or be closed down, because he did not “want families to spend all they have on these courses,” the Ministry of Education started to work on a plan and asked governors’ offices to determine which prep schools met the requirements of being a school.

The governors’ offices notified district education directorates, which in turn asked prep schools in their areas whether they met the standards of a school: a detached building, a garden, a library, a conference hall and a sufficient number of classrooms. Fifty-four out of 700 preparatory schools in İstanbul recently declared that they meet the requirements. The Ministry of Education is currently awaiting feedback from each province in Turkey, which currently has around 4,000 preparatory schools.