Regulatory Authority's Confrontation with Schools; Organization Claims Education Ministry is Not Cooperative

The head of the Government Trading Regulation Organization has deemed the collection of "excessive tuition fees" as a form of "price gouging" and stated that the Ministry of Education has not been cooperative in addressing issues with schools. Ahmad Asanlou mentioned that the lack of access to statistics and information is part of the non-cooperation from the Ministry of Education, adding that "we have deployed regulatory branches to schools on the ground." Previously, on December 21, the head of the Government Trading Regulation Organization announced the entry of the organization into violations committed by private schools, imposing fines exceeding 800 billion tomans and refunding 44 billion tomans to parents. The head of the Organization of Private Schools criticized the use of the term "price gouging" for "violating" schools and the 800 billion toman fine, stating that "this term is not appropriate" and "a school is not a commercial center," emphasizing that the responsibility for dealing with violating schools lies with the Ministry of Education. Ahmad Mahmoudzadeh stated that the law regarding education does not recognize schools as economic units, and if a violation occurs, the Ministry of Education must intervene. The news agency Tasnim reported on the discrepancy between approved tuition fees and the actual fees charged, noting that "in one case, the approved tuition fee for an elementary school in District 12 of Tehran for the 2023-2024 academic year is set at 30 million tomans, but the fee charged is 50 million tomans!" The issue of tuition fees is also noteworthy from another perspective. Article 3 of the Islamic Republic's Constitution mandates the government to utilize all its resources to provide free education for all at all levels. Article 30 explicitly states that "the government is obliged to provide free educational facilities for all citizens until the end of secondary education and to expand higher education facilities to the extent of the country's self-sufficiency free of charge." Despite this, various reports over the past decades have indicated that schools have violated or circumvented the principle of universal free education under various pretexts. The ideological campaign of the government in schools through the hiring of clerics; Najaht Bahrami explains the hiring of three thousand clerics in schools to impose the government's ideology in an interview with Mehrdad Darvishpour. Problems of "stateless children": they are not allowed to attend school. Ebrahim Raisi has mandated the teaching of "Defensive Sacred Sciences and Knowledge" in schools and universities. The advisor to the Minister of Education stated that clerics are completely "spontaneous" and "jihadist" in their activities in schools. The decline of education in Iran; severe academic decline among students.