With the enactment of Law No: 4306, the resources of our country were mobilized and an investment drive was initiated in order to build up the education infrastructure needed.

Alongside the use of the resources allocated to primary education investments under the 1997 budget, additional allotment of TL 11 trillion from the fund for accelerating investments and the education contributions under Law No: 4306 were used, and thus the physical capacity originally planned for 1997 increased by 80 percent and 12,103 classrooms were put in service by the end of the same year.

Keeping in view the flow of funds to MEB budget from the revenues of education contributions under Law No: 4306, priority was given to completion of investments under construction and adding classrooms and floors to existing schools. Also, funds were transferred to provincial governing bodies in accordance with payment plans and construction programs. Consequently, along with 21,620 classrooms put in service at primary schools by the end of year 1998, boarding opportunities shall be provided to 38,900 pupils through 61 YIBOs (Primary Regional Boarding Schools) and 26 PIOs (Primary Schools withPension).

In addition, 343 primary education schools contracted through the Ministry headquarters shall be in service within the year of 1999.

Besides the schools for eight year continuous compulsory education that are under construction with financing solely from MEB and provincial administrations; 2,924 classrooms were built in 1998 with funding entirely from the public. Still other 2,937 classrooms are being built through cooperation between MEB, provincial administrations and the public. In addition, IMKB (Istanbul Stock Exchange), TOBB (Turkish Union of Chambers and Bourses), Koç Group and Vehbi Koç Foundation are having 75 schools built with a total pupil capacity of 43,080.

Construction of these 15 primary education schools in 11 provinces and 14 districts, with a total pupil capacity of 7,200, is underway.

Under construction are 2 schools in 2 provinces in the Eastern Anatolia Region, one school in the Southeastern Anatolia Region, one school in the Black Sea Region, 3 schools in 3 provinces in the Central Anatolia Region and 8 schools in 8 provinces in the Marmara Region.

The countrywide enrolment rate of pre-school for the academic year 1998-1999 is 6.9 percent, for females and males combined. The enrolment rate is 6.5 percent for females and 7.0 percent for males. But the gender-based enrolment rates do not include the children in the Mother-Child Education Programs, since gender-based statistics have not been collected in these programs.

To the number of children at the public institutions of pre-school education, the number of children at the child care centers, that have been opened at the Social Services Institution for Children Care for the purpose of providing pre-school education to children in need of care and in accordance with Article.191, have been added.

Social services are provided for a fee at day care centers opened by the Social Services Advisory Council and Social Services Institution for Children Care for the purpose of providing care to children in need of care in the 0-6 age group, preserving their physical and mental health and imparting basic values, attitudes and habits.

Child care centers and social facilities have been established at the institutions where they are needed, for providing pre-school education to children whose parents are employed at public agencies and organizations. Article 191 of Public Servants Law: 657 is as follows:

"Child care centers and social facilities may be established for public servants where need and necessity is determined to exist."

The pre-school education activities of MEB General Directorate for Apprenticeship and Non-formal Education are carried out under two different programs, namely, the Mother-Child Education Program and Trainer Mothers’ Education Program. The number of pupils in these programs have been entered in the column titled "others" for the number of pre-school children in the indicator. The definition and progress of these activities are briefly described below:

The purpose of the program is to support comprehensive development and growth of the child through the mother. The program is implemented by means of the courses held at the public training centers of the General Directorate for Apprenticeship and Non-formal education. Mothers of children in the 0-6 age group attend these courses, which are organized separately for mothers of children in the age groups 0-2, 2-4, and 4-6. Mothers are informed in the subjects of child care, child development, nourishment, protection from child diseases, prevention of accidents, first aid, women’s reproductive health care and family planning, and parent-child relationships, in order to help the mothers become more self-confident and successful in child development and education and tackle problems more easily.

The program serves to help develop those families and children who do not have access to pre-school education services and are at risk due to their social and economic circumstances. Despite their disadvantaged environment and circumstances, the children’s cognitive, social and emotional development as well as their school achievement levels improve, due to such home-based education they receive.

Research has shown that the mothers who attend these programs become more sensitive to the matter of the development of their children, they build better relationships with their children and develop higher expectations and aspirations concerning the future of their children.

This activity is important in terms of contributing to the matter of equal opportunity in education, along with its support to pre-school education.

The purpose of the program is to produce professionals who understand the children’s physical, mental, emotional and social development and are able to act competently in caring for and educating children, in order to provide child care services to working mothers in their own homes.

The program having been started at 20 provinces in 1994-1995, was implemented at 26 provinces in 1997-1998. A total of 6,403 trainer mothers have been trained between 1994-1998.

The definition of data required for this indicator is (a) the number of new first grade entrants having attended pre-school education and the total new first grade entrants. Because the number of children who have attended pre-school education among the new first grade entrants was not known, this indicator was built by using the number of age- five pre-school children in the academic year 1997-1998, instead of the number of children who have attended pre-school education among the new 1998 first grade entrants. Therefore this indicator is a rough indicator but it can provide an idea.

Accordingly, the countrywide percentage of children who have attended some form of pre-school program among the new first grade entrants is 13.6 percent. This percentage was determined to be 13 percent for the public institutions, and 47.4 percent for private institutions. By the result of the gender parity index, the percentages of females and males who had received pre-school education among the new first grade entrants are equal to each other.

The ratio of the newly intaken at the official age for entering the first grade, which is necessary for the 4^th indicator, could not be calculated, as the data on distribution of new intakes on the basis of age did not exist.. Countrywide gross new intake rate was 97.9 percent in the academic year 1998-99. If one is to interpret this result; the fact that this ratio is very high, access to primary education is close to the targeted value of 100 percent. This indicates that the net intake rates are not very far from this target either.

The total enrolment ratio throughout Türkiye on the data for the academic year 1998-99 is 92.2 percent, 98.3 percent for males and 85.8 percent for females. The countrywide net enrolment ratio is 87.5 percent total, 92.6 percent for males and 82.3 percent for females. Before 1997, the enrolment ratio in five years primary education was %99.8. Following the law for eight years compulsory education, which means the unification of five years primary education and lower secondary education (3 years), the enrolment ratio decreased in eight years primary education in accordance with the low enrolment ratio in lower secondary education (%69.6). Through the eight-year continuous education, a massive initiative was undertaken in a decisive manner, for increasing attendance in primary education, for increasing primary education capacity, in short, for raising the enrolment ratio.

Regional Boarding Primary Schools and Primary Schools With Pension were planned and opened beginning in 1962, in accordance with Article 1 of the "Regional Primary Schools Regulation" under Primary Education and Training Law No: 222. This Article stipulated that "regional schools with day care and pension shall be opened where there are several villages close to each other, or in villages with houses or house groups spread over large areas, with no schools yet opened for various reasons".

Opening of YIBO and PIO continued later on in accordance with Article 25 of National Education Basic Law No: 1739 and Article 9 of Primary Education and Training Law No: 222.

Boarding schools and pension schools of primary education have been opened for assuring access to primary education services for the age group pupils living in the rural areas, in villages and sub-village settlements that do not have schools, and for the children of poor families. All expenditures of the pupils at these schools are covered by the State.

Education continued at 184 Regional Boarding Primary Schools and 117 Primary Schools with pension in the academic year 1998-99. In addition, 105 Primary Education Regional Boarding Schools, 11 Primary Schools With Pension, and 39 pension buildings are under construction.

Tables below show the status of the Regional Boarding Primary Schools and Primary Schools with Pension.

9 of the Regional Boarding Primary Schools and 10 of the Primary Schools With Pension have been allocated to females in order to assure females’ school attendance especially in settlement units with no schools.

Construction of YIBO and PIO were accelerated after Law No: 4306 became effective, as these schools are commissioned for providing means of better quality education to pupils who live in sparsely populated areas with settlement units spread over large areas. Also the capacities of existing YIBO and PIO were increased and the pupils who could not be covered by the bussing program were placed in YIBO and PIO, exempt from entry tests.

1. Assuring Equal Opportunity and Means of Education and Increasing Quality in Education: The fact that many small settlement units are spread over large areas throughout the country makes expanding education services difficult. While providing education services (such as school buildings and facilities and teachers) to a large number of small settlement units spread over large areas comes expensive from the angle of education economics, the efforts to reduce costs lead to decreases in quality of education.

Schools with very small numbers of pupils that are deprived of sufficient building, facilities and teachers are opened in rural areas in response to demands from the citizens. These schools not only make it difficult to bring up in a desirable manner the qualified people that are needed for development; they also do away with equality in the means of education. This state of affairs in turn decreases the quality of education and increases the cost of education. Consequently, the efforts for assuring equal opportunity and means of education and for increasing the quality of education have been important reasons that called for bussing in primary education.

2. Regular Inter-migrations: Another important factor of transmission to bussing in primary education is inter-migrations. Since 1980, migrations from rural locations to central provinces started. The main province people migrate to be; Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Bursa, Içel, Istanbul, Izmir, Kocaeli and recently Diyarbakir and Batman. The provinces migrated from are; Artvin, Çankiri, Erzurum, Kars, Rize, Sivas, Tunceli.

The migration especially from rural locations to central provinces, decreased he number of pupils and caused the schools to function below their capacities.

3. Large Numbers of Small Settlement Units Spread over Large Areas: While there are 35,000 villages throughout Turkiye (as of 1990), there are 44,319 sub-village settlements under these villages. The great majority of these settlements have very small populations. Taking education services to each and every one of these settlements requires recruitment of larger numbers of staff and lead to very high costs. By covering the pupils in these small settlements with the bussing programs for primary education, large savings were realized in manpower along with costs.

Furthermore the infrastructure services provided in the central villages under the bussing program would help these villages develop in time into larger, leading to elimination of small settlements spread over large areas.

4. The Importance of Bussing in view of Eight-year Continuous Education: Pursuant to Basic National Education Law No: 1739 and primary Education and Training Law No: 222, primary education covering education and training of the 6-to-14 age group is compulsory for all citizens, female or male, and is free of tuition at state schools. Nevertheless, only five years of compulsory education has been in practice on the basis of the provisional clauses in both Laws. Coverage of the second stage of primary education under compulsory education had been postponed until the sufficient physical capacity was created.

In today’s constantly changing and advancing world, it is impossible to meet the manpower needs of our country with only five years of compulsory education. As our country is undergoing the industrialization stage of development, our children’s receiving an education inferior to that in the rest of the world is inconceivable.

For these reasons, increasing the duration of compulsory education to eight years is a matter, which we heavily emphasize and we are decisive about it. In pursuit of this objective, the existing primary schools and secondary schools are being converted to primary education schools by adding to these schools the classrooms, workshops and other facilities as necessary.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to take the eight-year compulsory education to all settlement units in our country, where the number of small units of settlement is very large. Taking the eight-year education to each and every one of the 79.000 villages and sub-village settlements would cause the cost of education to rise and the quality of education to fall.

Then, how are we going to provide the eight-year compulsory education to our children who live in these settlement units?

It is at this point where the practice of "Bussing in Primary Education" asserts itself as an alternative solution.

The practice of bussing in primary education is absolutely necessary for providing the children who live in small settlement units with better means of education, for expanding the primary education services in a balanced way countrywide, for assuring equality in opportunity and means of education, and for increasing the quality of education. At the same time, savings in view of education economics would be realized to a large extent through the practice of bussing.

Where bussing cannot be practiced, the boarding schools and the pension schools are introduced as another alternative.

The total public current expenditures in education in this indicator belong to the Ministry of National Education. Furthermore, the pre-school education expenditures under the primary education schools along with the primary education expenditures under the secondary education schools are not included in the primary education expenditures. Accordingly, the share of primary education in public current expenditures in education stayed around 70 percent up until 1997. At 78.6 percent in 1990, this figure has consistently decreased thereafter down to 71.8 percent in 1997.

While the proportion of per capita GNP allocated to primary education was 1.7 percent in 1990; this figure has increased in the subsequent years to reach 2.1 percent in 1992. Thereafter the share of primary education in per capita GNP decreased down to 1.4 percent in 1997.