Pilot Survey on ICT usage in Schools in Turkey

1. Miraç Özar, Ph.DScience and Education Programmes ManagerBritish Council Turkeymirac.ozar@britishcouncil.org.tr

2. Pilot Survey on ICT usage in Schools in Turkey March 2005

3. MONE’s VISION • MONE’s vision places ICT among the basic needs of the schools such as safer buildings and sanitation. MONE utilizes funds supplied by the World Bank, EC and donationsfrom Turkish company owners for the modernisation of education.

4. General description • 70 million population • Scale of the system: 10m primary, 3m secondary, 1.8m tertiary • 15% of university entrance exam students can hope for a place • 83 universities (30 foundation) • 14 English language medium (1 French)

5. ICT & Turkey • Out of 38k, more than 20k schools have ADSL connection (end of 2006, all schools will have the connection) • 10k schools have IT classrooms financed by both international loans and local donations • 55k teachers received in-service trainning via DL on ICT • The following education portals will go live soon; Information Access, Skool, Think.com, Global Gateway

6. Pilot study of ICT survey • Joiny survey; BC Turkey and MONE / Directorary of Educational Technologies • 20 schools from Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir • 10 private, 10 state schools

7. SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY Data were collected through face to face interviews in twenty public and private schools located in İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir by using the questionnaire/interview schedule which was developed in collaboration with Ministry of National Education (MONE) officials.

8. ICT Infrastructure

9. ICT Infrastructure • Private schools have three times the level of computers compared to public schools. Generally public schools have more students. Considering that 80 % of the computers in public schools are obsolete, the differences between private and public schools become more dramatic.

10. ICT Infrastructure • Taking into account the overall number of computers, there are 36 students for each computer in public schools and 10 students for each computer in private schools.

11. ICT Infrastructure • All visited public schools have ADSL internet connection. Average number of computers connected to internet is 27, constituting 75% of all available computers. These numbers, however, were still lower than those of private schools where almost all computers are connected to internet.

12. ICT Infrastructure • Almost all public and private schools are equipped with desktop computers, printers, scanners, data projectors and overhead projectors.

13. ICT Infrastructure • Private schools almost exclusively use their own funds for achieving ICT tools. Public schools finance 79% of their ICT infrastructure from MONE budget. Donations constitute 5%, and funds of parents and teachers association constitute 16% of the resources of the ICT budget in public schools.

14. ICT Infrastructure • As for services received by the school administration, four of the ten public schools and nine of the ten private schools have a technical support team in their school for providing support to ICT users. The study indicated that none of the government schools have subscriptions to ICT periodicals while seven out of ten private schools are subscribed to at least one journal.

15. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS’ VISION • Most of the school administrators own a personal computer at home. The ratio is higher in private schools. Only four of the seven PC owners among ten public school administrators have internet connectivity at home. This figure is six for private school administrators.

16. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS’ VISION • The ratio of computer learning in in-service training is very low among private school administrators. Half of the private school administrators interviewed stated that they had learned to use computers by themselves.

17. SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS’ VISION • For the parents’ attitude towards using ICT tools in education, a discrepancy was observed between public and private schools. Public school administrators mostly think that the parents are not supportive while private school administrators are mostly satisfied with the parents support.

18. TEACHERS’ VISION • Teachers have better access to computers and the internet at home, as compared to school administrators. They also started using computers at an earlier age.

19. TEACHERS’ VISION • Most teachers are satisfied with the education software they use.

20. TEACHERS’ VISION • Teachers in public schools do not experience language difficulties in using ICT software while some of the private school teachers do. This might be due to the fact that public schools use software prepared in conformity with MONE specifications while private schools use foreign software.

21. TEACHERS’ VISION • All teachers think they receive proper support from the school administration about the use of ICT tools. As for receiving support from MONE however, both public and private school teachers asked for more support.

22. TEACHERS’ VISION • Just like school administrators, public school teachers seem to be somewhat dissatisfied with the parents support for using ICT. Private school teachers do not have such a problem and they think that the parents are supportive.

23. CONCLUSIONS • Almost all schools had established a computerised system for their administrative functions, including student database, reporting of academic achievements and monitoring attendance.

24. CONCLUSIONS • Some government schools use their ICT infrastructure as a training medium for parents or even for general public in the neighbourhood. These initiatives break the resistance of parents towards use of ICT and increase public awareness of ICT, and support the efforts for the penetration of ICT in their daily lives.

25. CONCLUSIONS • There is rapidly increasing awareness in using ICT in education. MONE has available resources and makes every effort to attain higher levels of education standards.

26. CONCLUSIONS • Creating rich education content is one of the first things on MONE’s agenda. Collaborating with the private sector and with international organisations provide good opportunities to meet the demand.

27. RECOMMENDATIONS • Workshop / Seminar A workshop/seminar should be organised in Turkey in light of the results of the main survey mentioned above. Key experts from UK should be identified and invited to run the workshop in collaboration with MONE Educational Technologies Department. The workshop should address both teachers and policy makers. Teachers attending the workshop should have opportunity to have hands-on experience on ICT usage based on real life examples.

28. RECOMMENDATIONS • Training for Parents The study showed that parents do not support ICT training if they are not exposed to the benefits of using ICT. Parent Training programmes to be organized, especially in public schools located in poorer communities, are expected to increase the effective usage of ICT in schools.

29. Future Plans • International/Regional Workshop on ICT in Turkey • Increase collaboration between MONE and DfES (joint projects, study visits, policy making and curriculum reform) • Education portals like Turkish version of GG will be up and running soon

30. Thank you for your attention