Gender Equality MARCH 2020 Gender Equality | Page 11

to make them benefit from equal opportunities and possibilities, and increasing literacy among
women. Moreover, the “women and education” section of the Gender Equality Action Plan covering
the period 2008-2013 has defined the objectives, targets and implementation strategies as well as
the responsible institutions and organizations.
A “Women and Education Monitoring Committee” was established to follow up the monitoring and
assessment of the Action Plan. As far as education is concerned, Turkey’s target is to achieve 100%
in the schooling of boys and girls by 2010. Besides, Turkey has committed herself to achieve 100% in
women literacy in the undersigned international conventions as well as in the international
instruments that she adopted without any reservation. Within this framework, Turkey has
embarked herself into a significant breakthrough to eliminate the negative indicators in the field of
education. The statistics on education illustrate that 10% of the children at school age, almost
threefourth of which are girls, are not enrolled to school. In all Pre-schools, primary and secondary
education schools, the same curriculum, rules and procedures of the Ministry of National Education
are applied; however, there are rural and urban discrepancies as far as the quality of the education
is concerned. Various activities, projects and campaigns are being carried out to eliminate
discrepancies, to establish gender equality awareness, which is an important factor with regard to
attendance of girls to schools, and to provide adequate physical conditions.
“Support to Basic Education Programme (SBEP)” is one of such projects which aims at developing
the living conditions of the population in the most disadvantaged rural, urban and slum areas by
increasing the education level. Reducing poverty, supporting the inclusion of children, youngsters
and adults remaining out of the basic education into the scope, increasing particularly the average
formal and non-formal education level of girls and women, are among the objectives of this Project.
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