A Government Official: About One Quarter of First-Grade Children Have Not Yet Registered for School

An official from the Ministry of Education of the Islamic Republic announced that less than a month before the start of the school year, nearly one quarter of first-grade children have not yet registered for school. Mojtaba Hashemi, head of the central registration office for students at the Ministry of Education, told ISNA news agency that 'about 77.3 percent of first-grade students have completed their registration,' meaning that 22.7 percent of the children who need to register for first grade have not yet done so. According to this education official, the number of first-grade students last year was nearly 1.7 million, and while this year's estimate is 'around the same,' '1,306,367 first graders' have registered so far. Hashemi stated that meetings have been held in the Ministry of Education to pursue '100 percent registration' for first graders, but some activities have been delayed due to 'the performance of provinces' and 'or the existence of issues that are currently unclear to us.' He noted that the registration rates for second-grade students is '92.1 percent,' for third grade '94.9 percent,' for fourth grade '94.1 percent,' and for fifth grade '95.7 percent.' The registration rate for sixth grade has been reported at '95.4 percent.' The head of the central registration office did not mention the ratio of boys to girls who have not yet registered for school. According to the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Esfand 1401, the 'very low enrollment rate' of out-of-school children, alongside the 'high number of annual dropouts' from 347,000 to 270,000, has caused the trend of 'school dropout' in Iran's education system to be on the rise. Furthermore, according to statistics from the Islamic Republic, in Esfand 1401, one out of every 16 students in Iran has lost the opportunity to attend school, and the dropout ratio in high school has reached one in every five. Recently, Masoumeh Najafi Pazouki, the deputy for primary education at the Ministry of Education, emphasized the increase in dropouts at the primary level, announcing the latest statistics of 160,000 students who have dropped out of primary education. Improving the quality of education has been one of the demands of teachers during their repeated protests in recent years. Civil activist Setar Rahmani told Voice of America that teachers not only seek improvement in their living conditions but also emphasize the enhancement of education quality. In addition to the quality of education, numerous reports from the past academic year indicated threats to the safety of students in schools due to serial poisonings. Ned Price, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, stated regarding these poisonings: 'Poisoning schoolgirls is unconscionable and must stop immediately.'