TEHRAN – A budget of 100 trillion rials (nearly $2.3 billion) will be allocated to renovate and retrofit the schools across the country while constructing new educational places, Education Minister Mohsen Haji Mirzaei has stated.

The budget is partially paid by the Ministry of Education and the benefactors by the end of this year (March 2020), Fars quoted Haji Mirzaei as saying on Tuesday.

Referring to the students’ population of 15 million in the country, he noted: “There are 150,000 schools which is not sufficient, so we try to increase the number of educational facilities.”

In December 2018, Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of the organization for renovation, development, and equipment of schools said that 30 percent of the schools nationwide are old, of which some 12 percent must be completely rebuilt and 18 percent must be retrofitted, which requires a total budget of $3 billion.

There are 530,000 classrooms nationwide, 160,000 of which are dilapidated, not meeting safety standards, he added.

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