Ankara Chamber of Industry 1st Organized Industrial Zone Chairman of the Board

The age we live in is the information age. Economies that have knowledge and can use it can achieve success. If it can produce knowledge and turn this knowledge into practice, a competitive power can be achieved. With globalization, competition has become more brutal with each passing day. The goal of our industrialists should be to turn to production with high added value and based on advanced technology and to increase the number of such enterprises. In the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum, a strong emphasis is placed on the education of human capital among the factors that increase the competitiveness of countries. For this reason, it is seen that the most important way to increase national and international competitiveness can be achieved by meeting the need for well-trained, qualified, and information technology-enabled manpower. Being a young country, the Republic of Türkiye is among the top 20 economies. Almost half of our population is under the age of 30. Our young and entrepreneurial population is our greatest strength. However, in order to turn this power into an advantage, we need to raise this generation very well.

It should be ensured that their digital literacy levels catch up with world standards. Young people need to be trained in solving complex problems, developing human relations, people management, critical thinking, negotiation skills, quality awareness, and creativity skills. The schools of our country should also be transformed into a structure suitable for the ways of doing business required by production by realizing their technological transformation.

Private Ankara Chamber of Industry (ASO) Technical College Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, as a young school born out of such a need; in a short time, it has made a significant progress in raising qualified and equipped people. It has become a model for our country in its own kind with its current structure, functioning and quality of education. Not only focusing on academic and vocational education; it has made it its mission to raise individuals who have the competence that the Turkish nation longs for, and who can master at least one foreign language, which is one of the important elements of global competitiveness. Education systems in which analytical, critical, creative and cognitive thinking skills are gained for the solution of real-life problems with an approach that brings the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to the fore in an integrated way are gaining importance.

Our school is equipped with its workshops and laboratories to ensure the adaptation of technology to education. Our school has to focus on new goals in order to contribute seriously to the well-trained and qualified manpower on the way to realizing the ideal of rising above the level of contemporary civilization that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of our Republic, aimed for the Turkish nation. By following the new trends in education, we aim to reach much further points in 2023, the 100th anniversary of our Republic, and afterwards. It is our greatest ideal to raise our students as young people with strong character, who are loyal to the values of the republic, who know themselves, who know their abilities, who are sensitive, who think, who can apply what they think, who ask, who question, who criticize, who can stand for the good-directly-beautiful, and who will work for Turkey's bright future.

M. Niyazi AKDAS
ASO 1. OSB Chairman of the Board and School Founder Representative