Schooling and childcare in Istanbul

The shape of the system

Compulsory education runs twelve years and covers ages six to seventeen, in three four-year stages: ilkokul, ortaokul and lise. State schools are free, and the Ministry of National Education has supplied textbooks free of charge since the 2003-04 year. The 2026-2027 school year in Istanbul began on Monday 14 September 2026. Half-term and end-of-year dates come from the ministry's çalışma takvimi for the year, which is where to take them from rather than from another parent.

Enrolling in a state school

The application goes to the Provincial or District Directorate of National Education for the province where you live, and the directorate places the child. The documents are the child's foreigner identity document, a document of residence, and whatever else the school asks for, which usually means an equivalency certificate, a transcript or a diploma. A child does not need to speak Turkish to enrol and cannot be refused a place for not speaking it.

• The residence document comes from the Provincial or District Civil Registration Office, or from the muhtar if the address is not yet in the MERNİS database.
• The directorate may set a placement test to decide the school and year group where documents are missing or a child's schooling history is unclear.
• No placement test is used at primary school age, where placement is on declaration.

Equivalency, which comes first

Schooling done abroad has to be recognised through denklik before it counts here. You apply either at the Provincial or District Directorate of National Education or online at edenklik.meb.gov.tr, and Istanbul's provincial directorate runs a dedicated equivalence appointment booking service. Start it before you need the school place rather than alongside it.

The permit, not an admissions window

The hard date foreign families hit is the residence permit rather than an admissions window, because a child without a valid permit and a registered address has nothing to enrol on. Children who hold a family residence permit as dependants attend school on that permit and need no separate student permit. A student permit is applied for at the İl Göç İdaresi Müdürlüğü like any other, and what it runs for and what it costs turn on the school and the child's nationality, so ask the directorate for your own case rather than copying another family's.

• A child under 18 applying for a student permit without a parent in Türkiye must produce a consent document, a birth certificate and an undertaking, in every case.

Pre-school, private and international

Pre-school is optional, and places are allocated by month-age bands set in the ministry's regulation and assessed at a cut-off date, with the oldest children — those due to start primary the following year — placed first. Take the bands and the cut-off for the year you are applying in from the İlçe Millî Eğitim Müdürlüğü, because they decide whether your child is eligible at all. Private schools affiliated to the ministry set their own fees, and Istanbul's provincial directorate publishes a register of licensed private education institutions, which is where to check a school is what it says it is.

• There is no central calendar for private and international school intakes. Contact the schools directly, a full year before the September you want.