TEHRAN – Some 4.5 percent of the national development budget proposed in the bill for the next [Iranian calendar] year (starting on March 21) has been earmarked for building schools, a three-fold rise compared to the current year’s figure.

The next year’s proposed development budget is about 1,040 billion rials (some $25 billion at the official rate of 42,000 rials).

Mehrollah Rakhshanimehr, director of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping Schools, said that 37 billion rials (around $880 million) has been spent in the current year on building schools, adding the figure will rise to 51 billion rials in the next year, IRNA reported on Thursday.

He noted that 20 percent of schools nationwide are in need of being reconstructed or retrofitted.

Last year, Rakhshanimehr said that some 30 percent of the country’s schools have been constructed by benefactors, adding there are 450 school-building charities in the country.

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

Some 85 billion rials (nearly $2 million) has been spent on average per day for renovating schools nationwide over the past three years, Education Minister Mohsen Haji Mirzaei has said.

MG