TEHRAN –During the past academic year (September 2023 – June 2024),  the Ministry of Education managed to enroll about 20 percent of out-of-school nomad students, an official with the Ministry of Education has said.

With the help of Nomad Affairs Organization, the out-of-school students or dropouts were reached out for a possible return to school, IRIB reported Ali Tirgir Mal Khalifeh as saying.

There are three main reasons for nomad students, particularly girls, to drop out of school including the dominant culture within nomadic society, the distance to school, or the school’s inaccessibility, the official stressed.

In order to prevent nomad students from dropping out of school and to return them to school, different measures have been taken.

Developing boarding schools, and establishing elementary schools even for one single student in nomadic communities are among these measures.

“Moreover, by empowering human resources, providing support and incentives for students and their parents, and making efforts to create a culture for education in nomadic areas, we were able to return nearly 20 percent of out-of-school and dropouts.”

Identified out-of-school children

According to a report on April 7, the Ministry of Education managed to enroll about 50,000 out-of-school students.

“Despite some achievements in identifying students who have dropped out of school, the main challenge is still encouraging them to return to school,” IRNA quoted Hamid Tarifi-Hosseini, an official with the Ministry of Education, as saying.

The ministry has assigned some staff to follow up on returning approximately 80,000 out-of-school students, he added.

There are over 20 factors leading to dropping out of school, so not all those who have not enrolled in a school year can be classified as out-of-school, as about 5,000 of them found out to have passed away, he further noted.

The official went on to say that reforming the primary education administration system, boosting educational equity and opportunities, improving educational quality, and empowering school systems are the key objectives of the Ministry of Education.

On March 9, Education Minister Reza-Morad Sahraee said more than 200,000 out-of-school children have been identified in the current academic year, and measures are being taken to help them continue their education.

The number of out-of-school children identified in the country reached 900,000 by the end of the last [academic] year, IRNA reported.

School dropouts have always been one of the challenges in the education system of many countries. Each country follows a specific strategy to deal with the problem.

According to Article 30 of the Constitution, the government must provide all citizens with free education up to secondary school and must expand free higher education to the extent required by the country for attaining self-sufficiency.

Therefore, students should be prevented from dropping out of school and careful planning is needed to bring them back to school. Out-of-school children should be organized.

In this regard, the Ministry of Education is trying to implement the law of free education for all citizens by building and developing state-run schools, recruiting as many teachers as possible to educate students in all parts of the country, and finally developing a positive culture to maximize the attendance of students in classrooms.

Despite the efforts, there are still some children who are missing out on education in all parts of the country, including Tehran.

The extensive efforts of educational authorities over the past four decades have realized the goal of public education and expansion of educational spaces thanks to which Iran has been placed among the top five countries in the international Olympiads.

The growth of literacy rate, especially among women, and per capita educational space are among the most important achievements of the country in the past four decades.

MT/MG