State-run media in Iran, on the verge of the new school year, report that “790,000 students” have not yet registered to attend classes.
One day before the new school year, on Saturday, September 21, the state-run Tasnim news agency quoted an education official stating that 890,000 students have not yet ordered their textbooks, and of these, only 100,000 have enrolled in schools.
This figure was provided by Mohammad Alavi-Tabar, the Deputy Head of the Educational Research and Planning Organization.
The news agency described this situation as “unprecedented” and reported that some regular public schools have refused to enroll students due to “poor grades” or “lack of available capacity.”
Previously, Tasnim had reported that some parents faced “difficulties created by certain public school administrators” when enrolling their children in entry-level grades—first, seventh, and tenth grades.
Meanwhile, according to the Deputy Minister of Secondary Education, as of September 8, only 87% of students had enrolled in the tenth grade, with “13% remaining unregistered.”
According to Tasnim, citing Ministry of Education statistics, the number of students in the new academic year is around 9.2 million in elementary school, 3.8 million in lower secondary school, and 2.9 million in upper secondary school.
Resalat newspaper, which is close to the ruling faction, reported last September that the number of out-of-school children and adolescents had increased by more than 17% over six years.
The Iranian Teachers’ Organization and the Cultural Association, in a statement at the start of the previous academic year, attributed the rise in dropout rates to the widening class gap, poverty, and inequality in the education system.
