Turkey's Century of Education Model was announced in August 2024, was linked to a circular, trainers' trainings were held in May 2024 and started to be implemented in grades 1, 5 and 9 in the 2025-2025 academic year.
One of the most important practices introduced with the Turkish Century Education Model is “School-Based Planning”.
School-based planning refers to the time allocated for activities such as research and observation, social activities, project work, local studies, reading activities, etc., which are decided to be carried out within the scope of the course by the council of teachers. In this context, it is aimed to provide flexibility by allowing teachers to adapt the curriculum. School-based planning activities are planned as a complementary and supportive area to the curriculum with this structure that gives teachers autonomy.
The functioning of school-based planning is to decide and implement joint and individual activities such as research and observation, social activities, project work, local studies, reading activities, etc., which are discussed and evaluated in the council of teachers and planned to be carried out.
After the decision of the council of teachers, each teacher will carry out these activities in each lesson and in each theme for the specified number of hours. For example, primary school 1st grade Turkish course consists of 8 themes and each theme has two hours of school-based planning for a total of 16 lesson hours; primary school 2nd grade Turkish course consists of 8 themes and each theme has two hours of school-based planning for a total of 16 lesson hours; primary school 3rd grade Turkish course consists of 8 themes and a total of 12 lesson hours of school-based planning; primary school 4th grade Turkish course consists of 8 themes and a total of 12 lesson hours of school-based planning.
School-based planning is included in all the courses whose curricula are being changed, giving teachers the initiative and time to carry out activities such as research and observation, social activities, project work, local studies and reading activities. In this way, it is thought to be an important practice in ensuring teacher autonomy.
In the second year of the introduction of the TMM, it is important to assess the status of the targeted practices and to evaluate their positive and negative aspects. In this sense, the Education Reform Initiative's Education Monitoring Report, based on teacher opinions, points to some structural problems regarding textbooks and curricula. The short and theoretical nature of in-service trainings on curricula and the limited number of concrete examples of how to implement in-class activities can cause teachers to feel overburdened and unprepared. Crowded classrooms, lack of physical infrastructure and materials in schools also affect the applicability of the programs in the classroom. The increase in hands-on activities, the inclusion of observations and experiments, and the inclusion of activities aimed at improving reading comprehension and problem-solving skills in the TCC are considered positive. It is stated that the introduction of abstract concepts at an early age without adequately considering students' readiness levels, content density, narrowing or eliminating the scope of some subjects and changing the order of subjects weaken the integrity of learning.
In this context, although it is still early days, it is still possible to make initial assessments about the effects and contributions of school-based planning to the teaching process. Roughly speaking, we can argue that the rate of implementation is not even one percent. Because the functioning of school-based planning is based on the decision and implementation of joint and individual activities such as research and observation, social activities, project studies, local studies, reading activities, etc., which are discussed and evaluated in the council of teachers and planned to be carried out, and since the council of teachers in public schools is held ‘on paper’, it is not rational to talk about whether this practice has been implemented or not!
This is not to blame our colleagues, but to take a picture of how things work in the Ministry of National Education and to recognize that decisions taken from the top will remain on paper.
As a result, school-based planning has remained a stillborn concept due to the non-functionality of the council of teachers and the non-democratic decision-making process, and because it has not been adequately explained to our colleagues!