The top 10% of students currently in their final year of middle school are set to win places in selected schools under a new entrance exam system in June, part of education reforms drafted on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s orders.

Erdoğan has said one of his goals is to forge a “pious generation” in Muslim-majority Turkey and the number of pupils at İmam Hatip schools, founded to train future imams and preachers, rose five-fold to 1.3 million students in the last six years.

According to the exam system guide posted on the education ministry website, nearly 300 of the 1,367 schools selected to receive students who pass the exam are İmam Hatip schools.

Education Minister İsmet Yılmaz told broadcaster CNN Türk in an interview the religious school allocation was low compared to the 62% allotment for science and regular high schools.

“Is everyone going to İmam Hatips? That’s an exaggeration,” he said. “We envisage the level going to İmam Hatips will be 23%. Twenty-three percent is not bigger than 62.”

“We are not forcing anyone to do anything,” he said, adding parents did not have to send children to particular schools.

While İmam Hatip students make up 11% of the total upper school population, they were allocated some 23% of funding in this year’s budget.

“The government is trying to direct successful pupils towards İmam Hatips by raising their profile, having been unable to achieve the desired success and increase demand for them,” main opposition CHP party MP Utku Çakırözer said.

More than one million students will complete middle school this year and the 90% who are not placed through exams will make preferences for schools near their homes.

Under the previous system, all students took the upper school entrance exam and Yılmaz said the new system was designed to limit the number of students facing the stress of exams.

The Eğitim-Sen teachers’ union said in a statement it was launching a court challenge to the new system.

“The AKP continues to insist on a policy of making education religious,” it said, referring to Erdoğan’s ruling AK Party.