Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (Jun 2020)
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON EDUCATION STATISTICS OF TURKEY AND SINGAPORE
Abstract
The concept of education can be simply defined as the process of bringing about behavioral changes for individuals. Far beyond the mentioned individual development, it is among the most important factors that contribute to social development and progress. For this reason, the importance of education for countries enhances day by day; as a result of this, many countries try to increase the national resources allocated for education. Although it is defined as a semi-public service, almost all of these resources are still covered by public budgets in almost every part of the world. This necessitates the expenditures and investments in education to be carried out based on correct planning. The importance of being able to invest strategically becomes more prominent for the countries. In particular, the importance of access to strategic execution of this investment for countries like Turkey, with an increasing number of individuals benefiting from education due to the potential of the young population, stands out even more. For this planning to be carried out systematically and correctly by countries, accurate, complete and reliable training data is needed. By analyzing these data, it is ensured that desired national targets and the education reaches become operational. Nowadays these data in Turkey and many countries by the ministries responsible for education have become an annual publication. In this study, the mentioned data of Turkey have been tried to be examined and interpreted in terms of different indicators. The data obtained in the study, which was conducted according to the scanning model, was examined according to the document analysis technique. Primary and secondary education levels within the scope of compulsory education have been discussed and besides the budget and education investments allocated to education, indicators related to education potential (number of schooling, student numbers per class, number of teachers according to education levels, etc.) have been examined. To make an international comparison, the data of Singapore, which has shown high-level success in exams such as TIMMS, PISA, PIRLS (including 2018 PISA) has been also examined and interpreted. In the study, it has been concluded that Turkey has some education indicators that are open for improvement and its education expenditures are not yet at the desired level. Also, it has found out that the recent educational expenditures made in Singapore have a significant contribution to the quality of education and success.
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