TED Ankara Koleji Vakfı Okulları
Ankara, Turkey · est. 1931 · PrivateThe oldest private school in Ankara and, in its own words, the first private Turkish school to teach in a foreign language: it was founded in 1931 on the instructions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. For many years the school stood in its buildings on Ziya Gokalp Avenue in central Ankara and gave its name to a whole city district, Kolej. It now works on a campus in Incek of 309,000 square metres, which it calls the largest school campus in the world at primary and secondary level. The school belongs to the TED group of schools run by the Turkish Education Association, founded in 1928; we have no directory of Turkish groups yet, so the link is stated in words. The school describes itself as a large family with thousands of students, hundreds of teachers and tens of thousands of graduates, but publishes no exact figures.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
IB · MYP, DP · authorised programmeCollege Board · authorised programmePearson · authorised programmeTED Okulları · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: MYP (ages 11-16), DP (ages 16-19). MYP is the middle stage, ages 11 to 16. There are no exams here either; at the end an optional electronic assessment of pupils' work is possible. DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →It gives a school approved centre status: that means Pearson exams can be sat in the school itself. What is checked is the premises, the equipment, the secure storage of papers and the presence of trained invigilators.
What the badge means for this school. The school can run Pearson exams on its own premises. The status says nothing about teaching, about results or about the school itself: any school able to run an exam securely holds it. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Which Pearson qualifications this school is approved for is not stated here.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
The state school programme of the country the school stands in: it is set by that country's ministry of education, which also licenses the school and awards the leaving certificate. That certificate is used for entry to local universities, and abroad it is matched to the local one.
What this means for this school. This entry does not count towards the score, and that is deliberate. Every lawful school in a country works to the national programme, so on its own it tells one school apart from no other - unlike the French, German or Russian programmes, which are carried abroad and confirmed by the register of their organisation. We show it because a parent needs to know what programme their child is taught and what certificate the child will get. Counting it would lift the whole ranking at once and still tell nobody apart.
Schools of Türk Eğitim Derneği - a civil organisation founded on 31 January 1928 under the name Türk Maarif Cemiyeti and calling itself the first civic organisation of the republic in education. The organisation exists separately from the schools and holds, besides them, TED University, founded in 2009 and admitting students in 2012, and the TEDMEM think tank. Since 2020 it has run an accreditation and consultancy of its own for outside schools under the name TED AD, and such a paper does not make a school part of the network. The numbers diverge within the site itself: the history page speaks of 46 institutions, while the list of schools gives 43 working colleges and two more schools whose opening is promised. The cities are Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa, Kayseri, Antalya, Konya, Mersin, Trabzon, Diyarbakır and some thirty more, including a college in Northern Cyprus.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.