Underdevelopment and poverty are two major characteristics of Sistan and Baluchestan Province in southeastern Iran. Statements by the provincial Director General of School Renovation, indicating that 1,500 classrooms in the province lack heating and cooling systems, highlight the authorities’ disregard for the plight of the Iranian people.
Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran’s security apparatus, quoted Meysam Lakzaei as stating that there is a significant gap between the province’s per capita educational resources and the national average.
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Mohammadreza Vaezi Mahdavi, an advocate for students, stated on January 9 that 46% of girls in the province drop out of school due to the lack of educational facilities.
Mahdavi noted that one of the key indicators is per capita educational space, which stands at an average of 5.8 square meters nationally, compared to just 3.6 square meters in Sistan and Baluchestan—a gap of about 2.2 square meters.
Recently, the government-affiliated website Tejarat News quoted Farooq Azmi, Sistan and Baluchestan’s representative in the Supreme Council of Provinces, saying: “Every year, 30% of students in this province are forced to drop out due to issues such as the exorbitant cost of school transportation. These students add to the 150,000 who are already out of school. This poses a very serious and dangerous warning for the province.”
Many consider the main factor behind this situation in Sistan and Baluchestan to be the institutionalized poverty in the province, believing that Iran’s regime deliberately keeps the province underdeveloped to serve various security and social objectives.
A report by the Parliament’s Research Center also supports this theory, stating that nearly 70% of school dropouts belong to the first through fifth economic deciles, which include the poorest segments of society.
The Parliament’s Research Center reported in its latest statistics that 30% of the population was below the poverty line as of 2023, a figure that experts claim has risen to over 50% in the past two years.
This issue was indirectly confirmed by the Director General of Education for Sistan and Baluchestan on January 1, who stated that the phenomenon of school dropouts is linked to various factors such as economic poverty in some households, border advantages, child labor, early marriages, and similar issues.
