Primary School: Pre-K to Grade 4
In the 2010-11 academic year the school opened its first Pre-K class (5 years of age); previously the school started in Kindergarten at 6 years of age. A specially designed new wing was added to the school to house the Pre-K and Kindergarten (click here for photographs). The school operates an immersion model (Turkish/English) with a substantial part of the weekly periods taught by native speaker teachers of English, with the remaining periods taught by Turkish teaching staff. At least 2 primary trained instructors will be with a class at any one time, and at times three.
The Özel Bilkent Primary School currently follows a class teacher system from grades 1 to 4 where class teachers cover the key subject areas, viz. Turkish, Life Sciences, Social Studies, Mathematics. Other subject areas, viz. English, Art, Music, Drama, Sports, Computing are taught by separate teachers. Students generally have 45 x 40 minute periods every week, 24 periods of which are spent with their class teacher, the remainder being divided amongst other subject teachers. English takes 12 periods in grade 1 and 10 from grades 2 to 4. Other subject lessons take up one or two periods each, with added time for activities. All subjects, with the exception of English, are taught in Turkish. The weekly number of periods required by the state is 30, whereas private schools often offer in the region of 45, as is the case in the Ozel Bilkent Schools.
Across Turkey the Curriculum for class teachers is topic based and prescribed by the Ministry of Education, with a pre-selected list of textbooks recommended from which instructors have to choose. These books are printed nationally and available at reasonable prices to students through a national printing and distribution system. The other subject areas are freer in terms of content, although a syllabus for each exists. For English, in view of the fact that the school starts English in the lower grades, whereas in state schools children generally begin English later, the syllabus is designed internally and not subject to undue external control, due to the fact that it exceeds state expectations in terms of time and content.
The primary school was accepted as an IB World School in November 2013. The International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Program (PYP) requires a school to develop 6 distinct units of inquiry across a school year, K to grade 4, with 4 units at Pre-K. The IB Primary Years Program has heralded an exciting new perspective on teaching methods and approaches in the primary school. Teachers at each level work together to produce the units of inquiry, which are integrated opportunities for inquiry-based learning around central themes of global significance. They bring together social sciences, science, language, literacy, math, and other subject areas into a single integrated learning experience. Some areas of math and literacy may be taught outside the units, but, in general, integration of learning in a constructivist perspective is the norm. One important challenge for the school has revolved around the integration of the national curriculum into the program of inquiry. The design of the units now incorporates the national curriculum objectives, and research and practice into achieving an ever more effective inquiry program in the classroom is a constant work in progress.
Middle School: Grades 5 to 8
Subject-based lessons and the nationally specified curriculum form the delivery system in Grades 5-8, with particular importance attached to English. Grade 5 incorporates 17 periods of English a week and serves the purpose of an intensive preparatory programme to boost English proficiency at the outset of Middle School. A system introduced by the Ministry of Education, which required students to sit a national test at the end of each of the semesters in grade 8, called TEOG, has now been discontinued. High scores in the TEOG allowed students to access the most sought after high schools. Middle Schools remain unsure of what might replace this exam, if anything, and at the time of writing no official announcement has been made in this regard.,
The middle school is a candidate school for the IB’s Middle Years Programme (MYP) and is seeking authorization in February 2018. A long development period has gone into preparing the school for the MYP which provides a bridge between the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the IB Diploma Programme (DP), both of which have been taught for 10 years in the Özel Bilkent Primary and High Schools. The schools have invested in significant staff training, curriculum development, and realignment of the school’s national curriculum to integrate the MYP into the schools’ programmes. The MYP is a 5 year programme which continues into the high school up to Grade 10. When the MYP programme is fully implemented it will connect to the IBDP in Grade 11, providing a seamless international curriculum from Pre-k to Grade 12. In 2019 the HIgh School will open a preparatory English programme for those students, both internal and external, whose English is not sufficiently strong to continue directly into High School from Grade 8.
The majority of Middle School students (75-85%) prefer to continue into the Özel Bilkent High School from where, once again, a majority of them select Bilkent University as their destination of choice for their university studies. This is understandable: Bilkent is one of the top three universities in Turkey, which all teach in the medium of English. The University is in the top 400 in world rankings by the Times Higher Education, and is much higher in the rankings of newly opened universities (last 50 years).
