TEHRAN – Some 2,950 educational projects were officially put into operation across the country via video conferencing with First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber in attendance, IRIB reported on Tuesday.

The educational projects include 13,450 classrooms constructed with the participation of charities throughout the country.

With the opening of these projects, more than 2 million square meters will be added to the educational space of the country.

These centers have been built in 31 provinces with a special focus on deprived and underprivileged areas with an investment of more than 100 trillion rials (nearly $370 million).

Many efforts have been made over the past couple of years by the government to support villagers and slow down the trend of migration from rural areas to cities, including, opening up job opportunities, building educational spaces and health centers, as well as empowering the deprived.

Currently, 26 percent of the country's population lives in villages, around 39,000 villages have more than 20 households and 23,000 villages have less than 20 households.

School renovation

There are some 107,000 schools nationwide with 530,000 classes, 160,000 of which are dilapidated, not meeting safety standards, accounting for 30 percent of the schools nationwide.

Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of school renovation, development and equipment organization, said in August 2020 that some 30 percent of the country’s schools have been constructed by school-building benefactors and there are 450 school-building charities in Iran.

Iran has many school-building benefactors amounting to 650,000 people inside and 1,000 people outside the country.

About 10 percent of charitable schools are built with the participation of charities abroad. This is a valuable asset, which should be promoted.

According to Nasser Ghofli, the director of the School-Building Donors Association, 400 school-building charities have been registered in the country so far.

A total of 36 trillion rials (nearly $133 million) has been allocated to renovate the schools nationwide over the past 8 years, Seyed Mohammad-Ali Afshani, former head of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, said.

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