Students Whipped for Inability to Pay Tuition in Kerman

According to reports, the principal of the school in the village of "Makhtarabad" in the "Rudbar Jonoob" county of Kerman province has whipped some students due to their parents' inability to pay a tuition fee of 30,000 tomans and expelled them from school. The website "Tabnak" reported on Sunday (October 10) that "M.M.", the principal of this school, punished all students who could not pay the tuition by whipping them eight times and subsequently expelled them. Families of some of these students confirmed the punishment in conversations with this website and expressed their objections to the pressure exerted by schools to collect money. They stated that "the economic conditions are such that they cannot afford the costs of assisting schools." Meanwhile, Esmail Pehlavani-Pour, the head of education in "Rudbar Jonoob" county, denied the occurrence of such an event, stating that this matter "does not align with reason and logic and is a complete falsehood." In response to this denial, "Tabnak" reported the existence of a video in which "the punished students of this school confirm the news of their whipping due to financial inability and fully explain the incident." This video was published on Saturday (October 9) by the website "Adalatkhahi", affiliated with the "Student Justice-Seeking Movement", in which several girls introduced themselves as students of this school and stated that they were whipped by the principal. The website "Justice-Seeking Students of Rafsanjan" also announced this "corporal punishment" on October 1. This website wrote that "this act {whipping} continues in the following days so that families who cannot afford to buy stationery and school supplies are forced to borrow or sell household items to provide the 30,000 tomans requested by the principal." Officials from the Ministry of Education have yet to deny or confirm this video about two days after its release. According to Article 30 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, "the government is obliged to provide free educational facilities for all people until the end of secondary education and to expand higher education free of charge to the extent of the country's self-sufficiency." However, every year before and after the beginning of the school year in Iran, media reports indicate pressure from some schools on parents of students to collect tuition fees. Ministry of Education officials also declare that collecting money from students is illegal. Despite these denials, a report published in September 2014 showed that the management of a boys' elementary school in District 5 of Tehran had separated students into "smart and non-smart" classes based on whether their parents paid financial assistance to the school. The principal of this elementary school defended the separation plan by stating that "it is not right for families who wish for their child to use better facilities to suffer because of those who do not wish to do so." Whipping students whose parents are unable to pay money to the school is one of the rare phenomena in Iran's educational system.