Education industry

Free education to all residents

In Turkey, education is seen as a fundamental right and a public service provided to every resident. For this reason, Governments allocate a significant amount of resources to education.  

Between the years of 2000 and 2018, the budget allocated to Ministry of National Education has been continuously increasing, rising from 3.3 billion TL to 120.8 billion TL. The increase in the general budget and the important growth that the Turkish economy has accomplished in the last 15 years have had an important effect on this increase. Together with this, it is seen that there has been a significant increase in the portion of the budget allocated to Ministry of National Education from general budget during this period. 

Public expenditure: 120.8 billion TL in 2017

The education's share from the Government's central budget reached 120.8 billion TL in 2017. The public resources allocated to education in Turkey have increased significantly both in terms of the amount and approached the OECD average. About 90 per cent of the education expenditures in OECD countries are public expenditures, and this rate is around 80 per cent in Turkey. Turkey with a private expenditure rate of 20 per cent is at the top among OECD countries. This demonstrates that the education expenditures of households are higher in Turkey. 

Phenomenal growth in number of enterprises

Education industry is constituted by public an private enterprises. Public sector does not aim for generating revenues and it is purely involved in the industry to provide universal and free services. The statistics presented below are derived from enterprises operating in the industry as private enterprises.  

An enterprise is an organisational unit producing goods or services which has a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making. An enterprise can carry out more than one economic activity and it can be situated at more than one location. An enterprise may consist out of one or more legal units. The number of enterprises is defined as the number enterprises engaged in productive activities in the industry. The number of enterprises in the industry grew on average about 8.8 per cent each year since 2009 with large increases in 2012 and 2013. There were 22,328 enterprises operating in the industry in 2017.    

TurkAnalitik estimates that most of the enterprises in the industry are small businesses those employing fewer than 20 people. Employees of small businesses are paid less than employees of medium and large size firms given their smaller share of total wages and salaries compared with their employment share in Turkish economy. Employees of smaller firms receive wages and salaries that are commensurate with their relatively low labour productivity. Differences in wages paid by small and large firms could be influenced by a number of factors including the skill composition of the workforce and the prevalence of casual part-time employees.