700% increase in private schools in 25 years: One in five schools is private
The proposal accepted in the General Assembly of the Parliament to levy a 20% SCT (ÖTV - Special Consumption Tax) on diamonds and gems has been removed from the bill. Those who collect SCT on cooking gas cylinders failed to do the same for diamonds. If they simply passed a general law stating that "the wealthy and the bosses" are exempt from tax, they wouldn't have to tire themselves out with every new regulation. The sensitivity shown towards diamonds is shown many times over to private school owners. The preference of the government and the AKP-MHP alliance (the ruling People's Alliance in Turkey) remains unchanged: always siding with the boss and the powerful, never with the public, the labourer, or the poor.
Private school bosses have been given whatever they asked for over the years. In the last 25 years, the number of private schools has increased by 700%. While there were 1,887 private schools in the 2001-2002 academic year, this figure has reached a record 14,700 in 2024-2025. The share of private schools within the total number of schools has risen from 3.72% to 19.85%. Now, one in every five schools is private.
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In pre-school education, the rate of private institutions is 41.22%, while in secondary education (high schools), it is 24.81%. Nearly one in two pre-schools and one in four high schools is private. The private schools sector report places particular emphasis on the "Turkey Investment Incentive System" published in August 2025 by the "Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, Investment and Finance Office." The incentives (Government financial support or tax breaks to encourage specific economic activity) for private schools are listed as follows: VAT (KDV - Value Added Tax) exemption, customs duty exemption, land allocation, tax reductions, support for the employer's share of social security premiums, and interest or profit share support.
While private school bosses were granted everything they desired, teachers working in private educational institutions had their right to a base salary stripped away in 2014. For the bosses: tax cuts, debt waivers, profits, interest shares, billions in incentives, and dozens of public lands. For the students: "education only as good as the money you pay." For the teachers: flexible and precarious working conditions under the hunger and poverty lines.
As the number of private schools grows, so does the number of teachers in these institutions. Teachers in private education now make up 15% (177,738) of the total teaching workforce.
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Every day that education is viewed as a sector rather than a public right, both students and teachers lose. With every year that private schools multiply, inequality in education deepens. Every day that inequality grows, children drop out of formal education. Teachers are forced into cheap, flexible, temporary, and insecure working conditions. We are experiencing such a massive collapse in education... With only a few days left until the anniversary of the founding of the Village Institutes (Köy Enstitüleri) [A unique 1940s Turkish educational project aimed at rural development through secular, practical education], we have seen through lived experience that losing secular, public education is, in fact, losing our future.
We have moved from the days of setting out with the promise, "We will not leave a single flower to bloom and wither alone in the mountains, meadows, or the most remote corners of the homeland," to days where hundreds of thousands of children drop out of school due to poverty and inequality, losing all hope of building a future through education.
The billions transferred to private school bosses are the sweat and toil of the public and the labourers. The lands allocated to private educational institutions belong to the public. Those billions, tax cuts, and exemptions are the right to public education stolen from children and young people. The struggle to nationalise private schools is the most paramount issue. It is about reclaiming what belongs to the people. It is about regaining equal, free, high-quality public education, and the hope of children and young people to create a future through learning.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled 25 yılda özel okul artışı yüzde 700: Beş okuldan biri özel, published in BirGün newspaper on April 9, 2026.
