Summary
The Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children (OOSC), launched in 2010 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics (UIS), is a central component of global monitoring of educational participation. The OOSC Initiative (OOSCI) supports the interrelated tasks of developing profiles of out-of-school children, linking quantitative and qualitative data to different barriers, and identifying effective strategies to address the OOSC problem (UNICEF-UIS, 2015). The initiative has a national, regional and global dimension and aims at action-oriented research and outcomes in the field of capacity development (UNICEF, Formative Evaluation of the OOSCI, 2018).
Almost all Turkish children complete primary and (lower) secondary education, and children who do not attend school are concentrated in the upper secondary (“high school”) age group (Ministry of National Education (MoNE), 2019c). However, across all school levels in Turkey, vulnerable groups are not enrolled in school or do not attend school regularly (UNICEF, 2012, 2019a). These include, but are not limited to, children with disabilities, children engaged in child labour, child marriage, early or forced marriage, and children in contact with the law. In addition, the intensive migration of around four million Syrian (and other) refugees since 2011, including just over 1.2 million school-age children (5–18 years), has affected the OOSC situation in Turkey for all children (UNICEF, 2019a).
This dual challenge that Turkey faces in relation to out-of-school children – addressing child protection-related issues while simultaneously addressing the high migration of Syrian children (UTP) – requires different research and policy approaches. Accordingly, these two issues are addressed separately in different OOSC reports. The present report focuses on out-of-school children and children at risk of early school leaving (OOSC) within the national population of Turkey.
The overall aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of OOSC in the national population in Turkey, based on a quantitative and qualitative (mixed methods) research framework. The study focuses on barriers that hinder children’s access to and completion of compulsory education in Turkey. These include a large number of often interrelated factors such as poverty, child labor, child, early and forced marriage, bullying, quality and access to schools, and cultural norms and language. Cross-cutting issues such as gender are also addressed.
The added value of this study is that it provides the most detailed and comprehensive overview of the OOSC phenomenon among the national child population in Turkey, focusing on the period 2018–2021 and making references to previous years to show trends. The quantitative analysis makes full use of the extensive data set available, including the 2018 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the 2020 Ministry of National Education (MoNE) data, while the qualitative analysis is partly based on an extensive data collection conducted in November 2020 and May 2021, focusing on the underlying reasons that explain OOSC according to the children, their parents and a series of key informant interviews (KIIs). The level of detail provided by the mixed methods analysis makes it possible to show trends in OOSC outcomes and barriers over time, to create more detailed profiles of out-of-school children and the barriers they face, and to identify any new and emerging barriers. Another contribution of this report is to highlight the barriers that appear most severe. Their identification is particularly important for policy work, as it will require state partners (and other stakeholders) to prioritise their actions and resources.
In addition to documenting the current situation with OOSC in the Turkish population and the underlying causes of different categories of OOSC, a main objective of the study is to provide policy guidance. This report provides an integrated analysis that assesses the applicability of current strategies based on the key findings of the mixed methods data analysis, which in turn provides the basis for formulating an updated set of policy recommendations.
