Some media outlets, including Fars and Tasnim, reported that the Supreme Administrative Court has issued a one-year “suspension from service” order for Abdul Rasool Pour Abbas, the head of the National Organization of Educational Testing.
It is said that Pour Abbas did not allow the suspicious candidates involved in the university entrance exam fraud case to return to university, and that is why this order has been issued against him.
Tasnim and Fars, both news agencies affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and security agencies, wrote on August 9 that the Administrative Court has ordered the suspension from service of Abdul Rasool Pour Abbas, the head of the National Organization for Educational Testing.
These media outlets referred to the reason for the decision of the Administrative Court as the “non-implementation of the temporary return to study order for some suspicious candidates of the university entrance exam” and the “resistance of Pour Abbas against cheaters.”
This matter has not been confirmed or denied by relevant institutions, including the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology.
A few days ago, the issue of continued education for more than a thousand students accused of cheating in medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and several popular engineering and humanities disciplines caused controversy and elicited reactions from members of parliament and officials in the Ministry of Science.
According to Fars, the disciplinary and review boards handling the violations of the nationwide examination issued an order to “invalidate the results of the main university entrance exam” for some of the suspicious candidates of the 2019, 2020, and 2021 exams.
In response, these individuals filed complaints with the Assessment Organization, the Ministry of Science, and Majlis (Parliament).
Article 11 prevented cheaters from entering university, but according to a new provision, this article can be enforced only against “entrance exam candidates” and not university students. This means that the National Organization of Educational Testing must address the suspicions regarding them from the time of announcing the preliminary results of the entrance exam until their registration in the university.
Based on this, some of the same suspicious candidates who had previously received a verdict to invalidate their exam results filed a complaint again with the Administrative Court, which issued a temporary order for some of them to return to studying, allowing them to become “temporary students.”
However, the National Organization of Educational Testing, refusing to implement this order, prevented the entry of suspicious candidates into the university. According to Pour Abbas, these individuals have been expelled from the university and are no longer considered students, and in fact, “incorrect information” has been provided to the judge.
All of these arguments led Pour Abbas to refrain from implementing the Administrative Court’s order, and as a result, he received a one-year suspension from service.
Fars News Agency mentioned in its report the “rumors” surrounding this issue and wrote, “Some consider the connection between one of the exam cheaters and the judge [of the Administrative Court] as the reason for this verdict.”
Cheating in the university entrance exam and the mafia behind it have been a controversial issue in the Assessment Organization and the Ministry of Science for years and have involved regime officials.
Previously, Mohammad Reza Niknejad, a member of the Teachers’ Guild Association, had said that “conflict of interest” prevents the perpetrators of the university entrance exam cheating from being identified.
Amidst these circumstances, one must ask why, despite all the controversies and despite passing its own exam since 1969 when the first nationwide entrance exam was held in Iran, the university entrance exam has not only persisted but is now scheduled to be held twice a year.
Mohammad Bathaei, the former Minister of Education, had said in 2020 to the official Iran newspaper, “The university entrance exam has caused students to suffer psychological problems, but the exam mafia does not allow the removal of the exam.”
Bathaei also stated, “The exam mafia has more power and influence than the minister, so under these circumstances, we don’t want to abolish the exam. We can, but we don’t want to.”
Ali Abdolali, a university entrance exam expert and member of the faculty at the University of Science and Industry, stated that the financial turnover of the exam mafia is currently around 400 to 500 trillion rials (approximately $800 million to $1 billion) annually. This was also confirmed by a former government minister.
Only 2.5 percent of the top ranks in last year’s entrance exam came from public schools, so out of the top 40 exam candidates, only 2 had studied in a public or semi-public school.
Now, titles such as educational inequality, injustice, and discrimination in the public education sector have reached a point where the children of the underprivileged and even the middle class do not have equal opportunities for social and educational progress.
