50% Increase in Stationery Prices; School Year Begins with Inflation for Students

Iranian schools are set to welcome students in the coming days, but rising educational costs, including a 50% increase in stationery prices, have led to a school year starting with inflation for students and their parents. One of the first consequences of this situation is students dropping out of education. According to a survey by the Capital Opinion Polling Center reported by Tejarat News on Wednesday, September 20, stationery prices have risen by an average of 50%. The survey results show that about 60% of households in Tehran pay tuition for their children's education, and more than 53% of students in Tehran walk to school because the cost of school transportation has increased by over 50% compared to last year. The survey indicates that the increase in stationery prices compared to last year has exceeded 50%. Additionally, the Iran Watch website reported that parents were shocked upon seeing the prices, stating that they are forced to buy only one or two essential items due to astronomical prices. One parent mentioned, "With a budget of one million tomans for stationery, I bought 800,000 tomans worth of notebooks and 200,000 tomans worth of colored pens... My daughter didn't need a backpack or shoes this year; otherwise, we wouldn't know where to get them." Field reports indicate that if the traditional school shopping includes shoes, backpacks, notebooks, pencils, and pens, families would need to spend an average of 6 million tomans. School uniforms are also a costly item in the school year's expense basket, with prices ranging from one million to one million and five hundred thousand tomans in public schools. The Arman-e-Melli newspaper reported on September 21, just before the new school year, about installment purchases of stationery, stating that the stationery market, which used to be bustling in the last days of summer, is now gripped by inflation, and there is no sign of the previous excitement in the market. The Jahane Sanat newspaper quoted the head of the stationery union in Hamadan, stating that there is a 50% increase in stationery prices, and the market is not in good condition compared to previous years, with people's purchasing power significantly reduced. Mousa Farzaniyan, head of the stationery and engineering supplies union, told the Eghtesad 24 website that due to rising prices, people's purchasing power has decreased, and they are currently managing expenses by making occasional purchases, providing only the essential items their children need for school and planning to buy the rest throughout the year. Meanwhile, inflation and rising prices in smaller cities in Iran manifest differently, with one of the first consequences being students dropping out of education. In this regard, the Education Department of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province announced that out of 17,000 first-grade students, 3,700 cannot afford textbooks and the necessary conditions to prepare for their new classes. The ILNA news agency reported on poverty in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, addressing the issue of dropout due to economic problems, with some parents expressing concern over the skyrocketing prices of necessary items for their children this school year, stating that their economic conditions are not suitable for continuing their children's education, forcing them to prevent their children from continuing school. The Deputy for Literacy of the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Education Department noted that factors other than financial poverty also contribute to student dropouts, citing cultural poverty, poor guardianship, employment, early marriage, serious illness, and mental retardation as other reasons for dropouts in this province. According to Hamzeh Bagheri Nejad, identifying some students who have dropped out of school is very difficult due to the lack of addresses, contact numbers, and other means of communication with them. The intensification of dropouts due to poverty in Iran occurs at a time when the Islamic Republic claims to provide free education and access to the educational system for all. However, the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly has a different view, stating in its latest report that in the 2021-2022 school year, over 911,000 children dropped out of the three educational levels. This report shows that 536,000 dropouts should have been in the second cycle of secondary education. Accordingly, the share of the first cycle of secondary education and primary education is almost equal, with the population of dropouts in primary and secondary education being 186,000 and 190,000, respectively. Data from the Statistical Center of Iran indicates that the number of dropouts in primary education has been increasing over three educational periods, with the number of dropouts in primary education being close to 162,000 in the 2017-2018 school year, which increased to over 210,000 in the 2020-2021 school year. Statistics also show that 70% of dropouts are from the lower income deciles one to five. Reports indicate that economic pressure in Iran is such that ILNA reported that the minimum living basket, including housing costs in Tehran, exceeds 23 million tomans, and in industrial metropolises like Mashhad, Isfahan, and Tabriz, it ranges between 20 to 22 million tomans. In this situation, the minimum wage for a worker subject to labor law, married with children, is about 8 million tomans.