TEHRAN – More than 14,700 new classrooms have been inaugurated across the country since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2021), Education Minister Yousef Nouri has said.

Some 100 trillion rials (about $385 million) has been invested in the project, IRIB reported on Wednesday.

This year, the administration has allocated up to 23.5 trillion rials (about $90 million) to complete semi-finished projects launched by benefactors, he said, adding that the budget will increase to 28 trillion rials (about $108 million) in the next year.

The national budget bill for the next year has proposed more than 60 trillion rials (about $230 million) for school building projects, compared with 46 trillion rials (about $177 million) for the current year, he concluded.

Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, has said some 81,500 classrooms have been constructed over the past 8 years across the country.

The number of old classrooms in need of reconstruction and renovation has been reduced from 30 percent to 19.5 percent over the past four years, he said.

So far, about 280,000 classrooms have been retrofitted to meet the safety standards, he added, ILNA reported.

Over the past 8 years, school building benefactors have donated 85 trillion rials (nearly $320 million) to constructs classrooms nationwide, he also noted.

Benefactors have proposed 28 trillion rials (nearly $102 million) to be included in the budget bill for the next year for building and renovating schools.

School-building donors allocated more than 30 trillion rials (nearly $111 million) to construct educational places nationwide in the last year, which has doubled this year.

Since 2017, the government has contributed more than 60 trillion rials (nearly $218 million) to school-building donors.

Rakhshanimehr said in August 2020 that some 30 percent of the country’s schools have been constructed by school-building benefactors, adding that 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.

Meanwhile, a total of 36 trillion rials (nearly $140 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, has said.

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.

More than 80 percent of schools across the country are currently safe and retrofitted, Mohammad-Ali Ghoorchebeigi, an official with the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipment of Schools, has said.

There are around one hundred thousand schools nationwide with a total of five hundred thousand classrooms, Ghoorchebeigi said, adding that 80.5 percent of the schools are retrofitted compared to 70 percent six years ago.

MG