Sistan and Baluchestan Has 'One Hundred Thousand Out-of-School Children'

Alireza Nakhaei, the director general of education in Sistan and Baluchestan, stated that there are one hundred thousand children who have dropped out of school in this province. According to the local ISNA news service in Sistan and Baluchestan, Nakhaei made these remarks on Saturday, December 7, during a meeting of the county's anti-drug council in Sarbaz. He noted that 30 percent of these 100,000 children live in Sarbaz County, which is one of the Sunni-populated areas of Iran and has 800 villages. The population of Sarbaz County was estimated to be 163,000 in the last official census in Iran, with 57,000 of them reported as illiterate. The last national census in Iran was conducted less than ten years ago, in 2006. Additionally, based on the data from this census, more than 640,000 people in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan, which has a total population of 2.35 million, are illiterate. The education director of Sistan and Baluchestan stated that this province has the highest number of illiterate and out-of-school children in the country. In August of this year, Ali Osat Hashemi, the governor of Sistan and Baluchestan, mentioned to the Mehr news agency that there are 33,000 out-of-school children at the elementary level in this province. He reported that there are 500,000 illiterate people in the province, of which 250,000 are under 50 years old. Hashemi identified two main problems in education in this province as the 'lack of educational and developmental spaces' and 'human resources.' The governor added that 6,600 educators in Sistan and Baluchestan have applied to transfer to other parts of the country, with '80 percent of them requesting transfers to areas where there is a severe shortage of personnel.' The use of non-local human resources has also been cited as a factor putting pressure on education in Sistan and Baluchestan. The governor stated that attracting and training local personnel could reduce future transfer pressures and increase the retention of human resources in the region. Sistan and Baluchestan is one of the most deprived areas of Iran, suffering not only from economic problems but also from drought and insecurity. Hamidreza Pashang, one of the representatives of Sistan and Baluchestan in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stated in July of this year that only half of the students in this province graduate. Pashang told the official news agency of the parliament that 'only 50 percent of school entrants manage to obtain a diploma, and one-third of classrooms are substandard, with walls and floors still being dirt.' According to him, 70 percent of the province's residents live below the poverty line, and Sistan and Baluchestan is the last province in Iran in terms of development.