Selective Approval of Rejected Teachers; 'Opponents' Will Not Be Accepted

Despite claims by the Minister of Education of the Pezeshkian government regarding the approval of qualifications for seven thousand individuals who were previously rejected in the teacher selection process, over 44 thousand of the 72 thousand candidates introduced for teacher interviews have still been disqualified. According to the state news agency IRNA, Alireza Kazemi stated that 'the files of all those who protested their selection results are being re-evaluated, and so far more than 15 thousand files have been reviewed.' Meanwhile, Mohammad Jafar Ghaem Panah, who was appointed by Pezeshkian as the head of the national selection affairs, announced in a press conference that approximately 31 thousand and 700 candidates had been rejected. He mentioned that in the teacher examination of 1403 (2024), which had 381 thousand participants, the acceptance capacity was 28 thousand, but ultimately 48 thousand were introduced, of which only 16 thousand and 300 were approved. According to this official, among nearly thirty-two thousand rejected candidates, '4,400 have received code 19.' The term 'code 19' in the Islamic Republic's education selection system refers to candidates who are disqualified from the recruitment process for various reasons, including failure to meet ethical, ideological, political, or social selection criteria. Based on the report from the head of selection affairs, similar conditions prevailed in the entrance exam for Farhangian University and Shahid Rajaei University, where out of 660 thousand candidates, only 28 thousand were accepted, meaning 632 thousand were excluded from the selection process. Ghaem Panah acknowledged that 'we did not train the five thousand capacity of the university that we could have trained from these universities,' adding that 'this has caused serious problems in education, leaving classes without teachers, ultimately forcing us to use retirees.' According to this report, the Minister of Education of the fourteenth government has promised 're-evaluation' regarding a considerable number of accepted candidates facing code 19 issues. Meanwhile, the head of selection in this ministry states that revising the selections does not mean hiring government opponents and what he calls 'counter-revolutionaries.'