July 17, 2020
Country Director of Turkish Maarif Foundation(TMF), Mr Harun Küçükaladağlı held a press conference to highlight the contributions of Pak-Turk Maarif International in promoting literacy in Pakistan, especially during the difficult times of COVID-19; and to share its success story. A large number of journalists and media persons from numerous renowned print and electronic media agencies attended the conference.
The Director started the conference with a brief introduction of Turkish Maarif Foundation and its origin. Turkish Maarif Foundation is a state-run Turkish non-profit foundation that is given the sole charter of setting up and running international Turkish schools all over the world. Being non-profit, it only invests more and takes out nothing. He further elaborated that Pak-Turk Maarif is a Pakistan based-international Turkish educational institute that is running under TMF, and is a sister to around 300 other international educational institutes in 43 countries around the world. Within Pakistan, it has 27 campuses in 10 different big cities of all four provinces. The Director explained to the audience that, since taking the charge of Pak-Turk Maarif in Dec 2018, we have managed great accomplishments. Our three main promises to Pakistani government and peoples are fulfilled: more investment from Turkey in the education sector in Pakistan; increased number of need-based and merit-based scholarship; and improved status of staff’s working capacity. So far, Turkish Maarif Foundation has invested around two million dollars in the renovation of 27 campuses of Pak-Turk Maarif across Pakistan to convert them into purpose-built state-of-the-art campuses. After Multan and Karachi, our next step would be in Kashmir ‘Kashmir is very sensitive for Turkey’ as per the directions of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The Director also commented on the effects of Coronavirus pandemic on the educational sector that is affecting our future generations for the past four months, and commended the efforts of the government of Pakistan in the form of Tele-School, as well as those of other private schools in the form of teleconferencing tools. However, he highlighted the importance of an interactive Learning Management System (LMS) such as Blackboard Open LMS that only Pak-Turk Maarif is using in Pakistan. Blackboard LMS is an innovative, expensive software that establishes formal education in a virtual form. It forms a class in which both students and teachers are present virtually using any smartphone, tablet, or laptop through their personal accounts, and are displayed their timetable for the day, any assignment, or quiz, or even if there is some homework to be done and submitted. For lectures, there are Recorded lessons (or A-synchronized) and live lessons (or Synchronized) with a ratio of 60% and 40% respectively. Pak-Turk Maarif is releasing 122 recorded lesson and 2800 live sessions every week. The parents can also monitor the attendance and progress of their child via this system.
The Director thanked the parents for their full trust and confidence on Pak-Turk Maarif’s management due to which Pak-Turk Maarif did not have to face any kind of financial setback at all. In return, Pak-Turk Maarif has not increased a single penny in its already reasonable fee structure, rather it has reduced 20% the monthly fee as per the direction of the government.
In the end, The Director , Mr Harun Küçükaladağlı thanked the media persons for their gracious attendance, and appreciated their queries.
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