Distance education spreads among high school students

Nine percent of high school students in the country prefer to continue their education through distance learning, where they do not physically attend school and carry out all exams and learning processes remotely as this preference has increased in recent years, local media has reported.

Although distance university education has been common in Türkiye for a very long time, it has started to spread among high school students as well.

Adults who left education for various reasons often prefer remote high school education, there are different reasons for students under 18 to choose distance learning.

According to the daily Milliyet, the first reason is to better prepare for university exams by allocating all the time that they would spend attending school in formal education to courses and private lessons.

Furthermore, in Türkiye's university entrance exam system, a student's overall score is influenced by their high school GPA.

Since distance learning exams are considerably easier than regular school exams, students who study remotely can achieve a higher GPA.

Education Specialist Salim Ünsal noted that students, particularly from prestigious schools, often worry about not achieving high grades, which leads them to opt for distance learning to prepare for exams more comfortably.

Ünsal emphasized that even students from top-level schools are choosing this pattern.

"The question of why we cannot keep these students in schools should be on the agenda. The grading system should be fairer."

According to the Education Ministry statistics, in the 2006-2007 academic year, there were 566,967 students in distance learning. In the 2021-2022 academic year, this number rose to 1,738,198 students.