New Crisis in Education: Thousands of Teachers Have Not Received Salaries Since October

An Iranian news agency reported a new crisis in education, stating that several thousand teachers have not received a single rial in salary since October. According to the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with security institutions, teachers hired through the Ministry of Education's service purchasing program confirmed this news. However, the Deputy Planning Minister responded by saying, 'The salaries of this group of teachers are not monthly and are based on our performance, meaning that first, the budget must be allocated by the Planning and Budget Organization to the Ministry of Education, and then it will be distributed to the companies and teachers!' Ali Farahadi explained the delay in salary payments by stating, 'We have contracts with intermediary companies, and the money is deposited for them and paid to the teachers by these companies.' Educational service purchasing teachers are considered informal teachers who entered the Ministry of Education in 2014, and currently, the majority of teachers hired in the last five years have been through the 'service purchasing' method. This treatment of service purchasing teachers occurs while the country's educational system is struggling with a shortage of teachers for 23,000 classrooms, serving a population of 460,000 students. The shortage is such that the Minister of Education stated on October 5 that if the Administrative and Recruitment Organization allows, we can accept our service purchasing teachers as 'fixed-term contracts.' This group of teachers was converted to 'fixed-term contracts' last year under a plan, but this was annulled by the Administrative Justice Court, and they reverted to service purchasing status. The problems faced by this group of educators are deep-rooted and have been struggled with for years, such that on February 4, 2021, the Hamshahri newspaper reported: 'According to the Ministry of Education, 21,700 service purchasing teachers are teaching across the country, most of whom are in towns and rural areas, still seeking to assert their rights.' The former Minister of Education in Ebrahim Raisi's government, however, responded to the issues faced by this group of educators on August 27, 2022, stating, 'Regarding the service purchasing forces from 2014 onwards, the parliament is reviewing proposals, and we are waiting for the law.' The educational system in Iran has faced many challenges in recent months, while educators have been pursuing their professional demands for years and have voiced their protests more loudly through demonstrations in recent years. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic officials, instead of addressing the livelihood issues and professional demands of teachers, are attempting to enrich the ideological foundations of the educational system by changing the content of textbooks and employing religious forces in collaboration with seminaries. These foundations have, in practice, nurtured new generations over the past four decades that have chosen lifestyles and beliefs that contradict the impositions of the Islamic Republic. This issue continues to occupy the Islamic Republic officials, who are still focused on making the educational system 'more Islamic' after four decades.