TEHRAN — While in 1970s there enrollment rate of the boys and girls in primary education was 70 percent, currently it exceeds 98 percent, Education Minister said on Thursday.

There are elementary schools in almost all areas across the country and there are even elementary schools in some regions with only one student, Mohammad Bat’haei said.

Of course there are a number of out-of-school children, but the numbers show the decline of the number of out-of-children in primary school age.

Enrollment of boys and girls in primary education is almost equal in the country, Fars news agency quoted him as saying. 

According to the Our World data website primary school education today is focused on establishing the fundamental literacy and numeracy skills among children, as well as developing their understanding of the world. These skills are increasingly necessary for life in the modern world, and are essential to the functioning of developed economies. For this reason, primary education is compulsory and provided by the state in almost all countries around the world.

The second United Nations Millennium Development Goal was to "ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." This goal was missed but significant progress has been made. In 1970, 28% of primary-school-age children in the world were not attending school, today this share has decline to 9% -- equivalent to 60 million children not in primary education.

MQ