Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, Aug. 16, 2019 – While the Iranian regime from day one of its establishment claimed to be a heaven for the poor and needy, it’s the poor who suffer the most under its rule, causing the rise of the super-rich and the dirt-poor classes among the Iranian society.
The Islamic republic’s constitution considers education until the end of high school a basic right that should be provided for free. In practice, however, public schools have lost all their credibility and quality.
In an article published on August 11, Javan newspaper, close to the terrorist-designated Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), digs into the so-called privatization of education.
“This drive was launched years ago and is resulting now in a situation where there isn’t even a single student from public schools from the top candidates of university entrance examinations. Eight seven percent of the top candidates in the nation-wide university entrance exams were from private schools while the remaining 13 percent were students from competitive public schools,” the piece explains.
Competitive public schools, or as they’re called in Iran, exemplary public schools, are funded by the government. However, these schools have very difficult entrance examinations that exclude the vast majority of the country’s students.
Javan newspaper then concludes, “This shows that moving along the path of privatizing a task that should be done by the government, has resulted in a situation where poorer families don’t have the ability to send their children to private schools or competitive public schools. Since the quality of education in normal public schools is low and there is no justice of education in the country, they are deprived of the opportunity to enter good universities and rise in higher education. This leads to an increase in social injustice.”
Mohammadreza Vaez Mahdavi, an adviser to the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, acknowledges that “more than nine percent of Iranian families have to sell their furniture and home appliances due to the fact that they cannot pay for education with their normal income.”
The Siasat-e Rooz newspaper wrote on August 9: “The inequality in education expenses between the families in the top decile and the bottom decile is one to 53. This means that the richest ten percent expend for their children's education 53 times more than the poorest ten percent.”
“The top individuals in entrance examinations (for universities) are from special, non-public schools,” the article continues, adding that “this is a warning about the unequal state of the country’s education system where now universities and higher education also become privileges for the society’s special groups.”
Being close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s faction, Siasat-e Rooz seeks to exonerate the entire regime and place the blame specifically on the government of Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani. The “quest to decrease the costs of education has targeted public schools, reproducing education inequality,” it adds.
The Tasnim news agency, close to the IRGC Quds Force, another terrorist-designated entity of Iran’s regime, interviews an assistant professor at the Allameh University on this subject.
“Recently, UNESCO has advised governments to dedicate four to six percent of the gross domestic product and 15 to 20 percent of their budgets to public education. In Iran, however, only 1.5 to 2 percent of the GDP, and ten percent of the public budget are allocated to education.”
Tasnim also writes that in rich countries, only 18 percent of children’s education costs are paid by parents. In Iran under the mullahs’ rule, families have to cover around 33 percent of their children’s education costs.
