Iran Statistical Center: The Number of School Dropouts Has Reached Nearly One Million

The Iran Statistical Center announced that the number of individuals who have dropped out of education has exceeded 992,000. According to a report cited by the Tasnim news agency, the share of dropouts in primary education is 2%, in first secondary education is 5.23%, and in second secondary education is 16.12%. Tasnim reported that currently, more than 992,000 students are absent from schools for various reasons such as poverty, cultural issues like families preventing girls from continuing their education, entering the labor market, and lack of motivation for studying due to the mismatch between school education and the real needs of individuals. The Deputy Minister of Primary Education had also announced in September of this year that in the primary education sector for the 2023-2024 academic year, there were over 216,000 children who had dropped out of school. At the same time, a former Minister of Education, citing statistics from the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stated that the number of school dropouts in Iran was 930,000 and mentioned that these individuals would form the future illiterate population. Following the release of these statistics, the Shargh newspaper wrote on the first of Mehr this year: "Education has lost its economic function. Up to 20 or even 10 years ago, education was the best opportunity for advancement and mobility between social classes, but currently, individuals cannot achieve class mobility by studying at higher levels." Shargh emphasized that "students consider dropping out and entering the labor market as a win for themselves and view studying and the hours spent in class as a loss." The issue of poverty and the need for families in the lower income brackets for more income has led many students to enter the labor market. On the other hand, some experts attribute the high dropout rates in secondary education to widespread poverty and a sense of inefficacy in education among students. Analysts believe that some students consider continuing education in the Islamic Republic's educational system a waste of time and seek freelance jobs. With the increasing trend of dropping out and the widening gap between household income and expenses, the government under Masoud Pezeshkian still lacks a clear economic plan to improve the country's and people's conditions, and the budget for the year 2025 has also been assessed by experts as inflationary and lacking sufficient economic growth. As a result, concerns about the balanced spread of poverty in Iran and the intergenerational transmission of poverty have increased.