TEHRAN – As of the current academic year that started on September 23, 2023, the Ministry of Education has managed to enroll about 50,000 out-of-school students.

In the current academic year, 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-schools, 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.

Identified out-of-school children

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.

MT/MG