TEHRAN – Hossein Asadi, a teacher in Khuzestan province, has spent 12 billion rials (nearly $290,000) that he inherited from his father to educate students in deprived areas.

‘From my father's inheritance, I was about to buy a car, and in a conversation with one of the school principals, I decided to talk to a girl who was depressed due to being dropped out of school,” Asadi said.

In a conversation with this girl, I realized that she was depressed due to not having a mobile phone and falling behind in education, so I bought her a tablet as a gift to attend school, he added.

‘After this decision, I provided 153 tablets for financially struggling students and prevent them from being out of school, and I plan to provide another 200 tablets by the next week,” he noted.

Education in COVID-19 era

All educational centers in Iran were closed in late February due to the coronavirus pandemic, but 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.

This year, education was followed in three forms of in-person, virtual, and television-based, meanwhile, Health Minister Saeed Namaki warned that the third wave of the pandemic has just flared up in the country, as the new cases of coronavirus in Iran hit an all-time high. So, the officials decided to increase the restrictions and stick to e-learning schools.

In early-October, a smart school network plan was officially inaugurated by connecting over 76,000 schools nationwide.

To achieve communication justice to reduce the educational gap between urban and rural students, the first phase of the smart school network plan was launched.

According to this plan, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is obliged, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, to provide access (hardware-software and content) to textbooks, educational content, tests, and academic counseling, educational computer games, aptitude assessment, technical and social skills free of charge to all students in cities with less than 20,000 people and in villages and suburbs.

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