Turkey educating nearly 500,000 Syrian children

ANKARA 

Turkey's Ministry of National Education integrated nearly half a million Syrian children into the education system in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to official data.

Turkey hosts 3.2 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country in the world.

According to information gathered by an Anadolu Agency reporter from ministry data, 492,544 school-aged Syrian children out of just over 833,000 were integrated into the Turkish system in the 2016-2017 academic year.

This accounts for almost 60 percent of school-aged Syrian refugees sheltering in Turkey.

Among the nearly half a million Syrian children in the Turkish system are: 25,761 kindergarteners; 106,257 secondary-school pupils and 51,889 high-school students.

Over 308,637 primary-school aged Syrian students living in Turkey were integrated into the Turkish education system in the 2016-2017 academic year.

The ministry aims to increase education access to Syrian students to 65 percent in the 2017-2018 academic year.

Ankara has spent $25 billion in helping and sheltering refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.

Last month, the EU delegation head to Turkey, Christian Berger: "Turkey has set an example for the rest of the world in the way it has integrated Syrian children into the Turkish education system."

Syria has remained locked in a vicious civil war since 2011. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by the conflict and millions more displaced, according to UN figures.

Reporting by Yasemin Kalyoncu:Writing by Meryem Goktas