TEHRAN – The Literacy Movement Organization puts the education of foreign nationals on the agenda, the head of the Organization has said.

Foreign nationals enjoy free education like Iranian citizens, IRNA quoted Alireza Abdi as saying on Wednesday.

“We need the help and support of charitable institutions to cover more citizens who have not received an education,” he further noted.

If the charitable institutions support and educate nationals in the cities successfully, it will become a model for other provinces where nationals live and can receive educational services, he said.

With the participation and cooperation of the social partners of the literacy organization and the non-governmental organizations, we can achieve the desired result in the education of the illiterate people and contribute to the growth and progress of refugee literacy, he explained.

Significant increase in refugee literacy

 The literacy rate among refugees has increased significantly in recent decades. So that the literacy rate of Afghan immigrants in Iran is higher than the number of literate people in Afghanistan, according to a report published in June by the research center of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis).

According to the Population and Housing Census of the National Statistics Center in 2016, the population of refugees officially residing in Iran was 1.654, of which Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani immigrants constitute the majority of international immigrants. In fact, 95 percent of the immigrants in Iran are "Afghan", 2 percent are "Iraqi" and about 1 percent are "Pakistani".

The research center of the Iranian Parliament, in a report published in June, addressed the issue of the education of immigrant children.

Only about 10 percent of the first generation of refugees who entered Iran in the early 1980s were literate before arriving, which has now reached 64 percent. In the early 2010s, the literacy rate among refugees was about 52 percent, but by the end of the 2010s, it had risen to 64 percent.

The literacy rate is much higher in the second and third generations of immigrants. Some 76 percent of Afghan youth aged 15 to 29 in Iran are literate.

The literacy rate of Afghan immigrants living in Iran is higher than the number of literate people in Afghanistan itself. So, the literacy rate of the second generation of Afghan immigrants in Iran is much closer to the literacy rate of Iranians.

In the last academic year (September 2020- September 2021), out of the total number of non-Iranian students, 1610 are preschoolers, 335,963 students are in the first and second elementary school, 104,458 were in the first year of junior high school, and 55,590 in the second year of junior high school. One-third of enrolled students are undocumented and illegal residents.

Close to eradicating illiteracy

Before the Islamic Revolution, the country's literacy rate was 48 percent as some 14.2 million people (52.5%) were illiterate.

One year after the Islamic Revolution and due to the importance and necessity of literacy, by the order of Imam Khomeini (RA), in December 1979, the Literacy Movement Organization was established to eliminate illiteracy in the country.

After the establishment of the organization in 1986, nearly 11 million people were added to the country's literate, and the country's literacy rate increased from 47.5 percent to about 61.8 percent.

Also, 400,000 illiterate people are covered by the Literacy Movement every year, 50 percent of whom are functionally illiterate.

Currently, the number of illiterate people is less than one million. Now, only five out of every 100 Iranians are illiterate, Shapour Mohammadzadeh, head of the Literacy Movement Organization said.

According to the latest census, the literacy rate is 96.2 percent, which increases by 0.5 percent every year. Now the distribution of illiteracy in the provinces is very high, in some provinces one illiterate can be found every 20 square kilometers.

Mohammadzadeh expressed hope to soon celebrate the eradication of illiteracy in the provinces where the literacy rate is 98 percent. Now 50 percent of the activities of the Literacy Movement Organization are focused on consolidating and transferring literacy so that there is no return to illiteracy.

FB/MG