The “Whole School Model”, which has been developed as part of the European Union - Council of Europe Joint Project on Strengthening Democratic Culture in Basic Education, was introduced to the Project’s stakeholders in a launching meeting on 24-25 October 2019 in Ankara. The participants included school principals, teachers and parents from the Project’s pilot provinces, representatives of different departments of the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and of the Council of Europe (CoE), ambassadors, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representatives of the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Turkey, and representatives of other stakeholders including NGOs.

The meeting started with the opening speeches of Katia DOLGOVA DREYER, Head of Bilateral and Regional Co-operation Unit at the Education Department of the Council of Europe; Eleftheria PERTZINIDOU, Deputy Head of Delegation of the European Union to Turkey, and Dr. Cem GENÇOĞLU, Director General for Basic Education at the Ministry of National Education. During the meeting the participants were informed of the Project, the CoE’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, and the draft Whole School Model, respectively. The first day of the meeting ended with discussions and brainstorming on different aspects of democratic school culture.

On the second day of the meeting, the participants were divided into 3 groups (pre-school, primary school, and middle school) to focus on classroom environment, school environment and school governance and to discuss how the model could be implemented to improve their schools in these regards.

Starting from November 2019, the Whole School Model will be implemented through the commissions to be created in each pilot school. Following the pilot implementation in the 2019-2020 academic year, the Model will be revised in line with the evaluation and feedback and continue to be tested in the 2020-2021 academic year.