Iran's Minister of Education Receives Third Yellow Card from Parliament

On Tuesday, Iran's Minister of Education, Ali Asghar Fani, failed to convince members of parliament and received his third yellow card from representatives, making him the third minister in Hassan Rouhani's cabinet to receive three yellow cards. According to Iranian news agencies, Fani appeared in the parliament to answer questions from Mahdi Mousavi-Nejad, the representative from Dashtestan. The question addressed by Mousavi-Nejad concerned the 'employment of ineffective and retired personnel in education, lack of attention to financial resources and human resource management in education, and the closure of middle schools in villages and some cities,' which ultimately did not satisfy the parliament members. Before Fani, Ali Tayebnia, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, and Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, the Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade, were two ministers from the eleventh government who received three yellow cards from parliament. The questioning representative criticized the 'government's indifference and lack of sensitivity to the needs of education' as the most fundamental sector of society, referring to the dissatisfaction and protests from educators regarding the management of this ministry in recent years and criticized the 'incomplete and arbitrary' implementation of the teacher ranking system. According to Mousavi-Nejad, 'the end-of-service bonuses for retired educators have not been paid for over 15 months.' In response, the Minister of Education provided statistics, stating: 'The average service record of current managers in education is 27 years, compared to 29 years in the previous period.' He claimed that the employment of retired personnel is 'less than the fingers of one hand.' Fani mentioned the implementation of the teacher ranking system for about 700,000 teachers, stating: 'Accordingly, an average of 300,000 tomans has been added to the salaries of educational colleagues.' At the end of the Minister's explanations, out of 194 representatives present in the parliament, 78 voted in favor of his responses, while 83 voted against and eight abstained, indicating that the representatives were not convinced by Fani's answers. The Minister of Education had previously faced impeachment in July of this year, which did not receive enough votes, and the representatives voted to continue his role as Minister of Education. Receiving a third yellow card does not automatically place the minister's impeachment proposal on the parliament's agenda. Ali Rabiei, the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, and Ali Jannati, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, are among the ministers with two yellow cards in the government. Mahmoud Goudarzi, the Minister of Sports and Youth, Mahmoud Vaezi, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, and Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, the Minister of Interior, are also other ministers in Hassan Rouhani's cabinet, each with one yellow card. In this context, Fani, the Minister of Education, was retained in his position.