Turkey to improve foreign language education at schools

By Baris Gundogan

ANKARA

In an attempt to improve the foreign language education, Turkey plans to increase of languages taught at schools, the national education minister announced on Thursday.

Speaking at the Anadolu Agency’s Editors’ Desk in Ankara, Ziya Selcuk said: “We will apply a pilot scheme to teach 5 or 6 foreign languages [to students] at the various schools of Turkey within the next two years.”

Selcuk also said that primary school should not start at age of 5.

“We need to rearrange this. There will be an arrangement on this next year.”

In response to a question on whether the nursery school will be mandatory, he said it would take some time.

“We cannot make it start immediately. We do not have such an infrastructure,” Selcuk said.