Nearly 19 million primary, secondary and high school students, led by 1.2 million educators, returned to classes as Türkiye officially began its 2022-23 academic year on Monday.

Enthusiastic students in uniforms arrived at respective schools early in the morning and filled the classrooms, while equally excited parents waited outside.

Schools, in the meantime, largely left the COVID-19 pandemic behind and welcomed pupils without facemasks for the first time in over two years.

Teachers and educators also shared the excitement. A total of 1.2 million teachers, including 20,000 who joined the education family earlier this year, were in their best attire and ready to welcome the students. School administrators and teachers have worked throughout the summer to prepare the schools for the new academic year.

Aside from primary and secondary students, preschoolers and first graders were also present after attending an orientation program from Sept. 5-9. Integration programs for new secondary and high-school students began Monday and will continue until Sept. 16, according to the Ministry of National Education (MEB).

Like every year, the Education Ministry will provide free textbooks to all 19 million students. However, it will also provide over 136 million supplementary materials and resources free of cost for the first time this year.

Top priority

To mark the beginning of the academic year, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited a school in Istanbul and met the students and teachers.

"When we took office 20 years ago, we set the first of the four pillars on which we would raise the country as education, health, safety and justice. We never compromised on our priority in education, no matter what the conditions were," he said.

President Erdoğan also wished the new academic year to be beneficial to students, teachers, parents, the education community and the country. He thanked all the teachers and remembered the educators who were killed in terrorist attacks.

The government has heavily invested in education, approving a budget of over TL 3.1 billion ($169.93 million) for schools across the country to prepare for the new education year.

In its efforts to bring every child under its coverage, the Education Ministry has opened 1450 new kindergartens and 10,200 kindergarten classes this year. It plans to exceed the target of 3,000 kindergartens by the end of the year.

It is also transforming disused school buildings in remote villages for the local community. As part of the project, vacant school buildings will be repurposed as social learning centers, known as "Village Wellness Centers."

So far it has transformed approximately 800 schools and aims to raise that number to 6,970 by the end of the year.

The government is also running a "No Schools without Libraries Project," opening 16,361 school libraries across the country with over 80 million books.

The first break of the 2022-2023 academic year will be between Nov. 14 and Nov. 18, 2022. It will be followed by the semester break on Jan. 23 – Feb. 3, 2023, and a second break on April 17-20, 2023.

The academic year will end on June 16, 2023.