TEHRAN – Some 6,700 mobile, semi-mobile and fixed nomadic schools are providing education in 27 provinces of the country, the director of the office for the development of educational justice and nomadic education, has stated.

There are currently 210,000 nomadic students studying in 14,000 classrooms across the country, the number of whom increased by 10 percent compared to last [Iranian calendar] year (March 2019-March 2020), IRNA quoted Mohammad Reza Seifi as saying on Tuesday.
There are over 1.5 million nomads in Iran today. Many of these tribes such as the Kurds, Bakhtiyaris (Bactrians), Lurs, Guilaks, and the Baluchs are descendants of people who came from Central Asia to settle in the Iranian Plateau.

Each year, Iranian students start the school year on September 23, after three-month summer vacation, while this year, in the light of the coronavirus pandemic, all educational centers in Iran have been closed since late February 2020, and education was followed in three forms of in-person, virtual, and television-based.

In order for students to keep in touch with their studies, the Ministry of Education launched a homegrown mobile application on April 9, called SHAD, providing students with distance learning programs. He added that more than 60 percent of students and 94 percent of teachers attended 64 percent of classes through the SHAD app, whose acronym in Persian translates as the Students Education Network.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) also began to broadcast televised educational programs on a daily basis after school closures.

The National Headquarters for Coronavirus Control announced that schools with less than 50 pupils and vocational schools are allowed to start operating for practical and workshop courses in accordance with the health protocols, while the students’ presence is voluntary and on their choice.

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