Iran’s education system is grappling with a severe teacher shortage and inadequate infrastructure, according to recent statements by Babak Negahdari, head of the Research Center of the Iranian Parliament.
The country is facing a deficit of at least 176,000 teachers in its schools, with an additional 72,000 educators expected to retire by September 2024.
Negahdari attributes this crisis to two decades of irregular recruitment and employment practices in the education sector. He cited the neglect of university educator capacity development, the weakening of teacher training centers, and inconsistent employment regulations between 2009 and 2021 as key factors contributing to the human resource crisis in the Ministry of Education.
The infrastructure challenges are equally concerning. The average per capita educational space in Iran is only 5.28 square meters, significantly below the standard of 8.5 square meters. Alarmingly, 11 provinces have even less space than the national average.
Furthermore, 104,000 classrooms across the country are in a state of disrepair, posing safety risks to students and requiring urgent demolition, reconstruction, or retrofitting.
The provinces with the highest percentage of unsafe classrooms are Kurdistan (38.7%), East Azerbaijan (38.6%), and Tehran (28.1%). Additionally, 79,000 classrooms lack adequate heating or cooling equipment.
The financial requirements to address these issues are substantial. Negahdari estimates that 160 trillion tomans are needed to increase educational spaces, 150 trillion tomans for rebuilding unsafe classrooms, and 7.7 trillion tomans for supplying or repairing cooling and heating devices.
However, the current education budget does not allocate sufficient funds to tackle these problems.
Critics have pointed out the disparity between the budgets allocated to governmental, military, and ideological institutions compared to vital ministries like education, environment, and sports.
This imbalance is seen as a primary cause of the escalating educational, social, and cultural crises in Iran.
The teacher shortage is expected to worsen in the 2024-2025 academic year, even with the implementation of strict policies on management personnel allocation and the utilization of retired and full-time teachers.
Negahdari suggests expediting the teacher selection process to ensure new educators are in place before the start of the school year in September.
The current situation has led to rushed placements, with some teachers entering classrooms without proper training. In 2023, the final results of the teacher recruitment exam were announced just a week before the start of the school year, leaving no time for preparation.
Low salaries, high housing costs in major cities, and irregular payment of overtime and teaching fees are deterring potential educators from entering the profession. This has resulted in recruitment shortfalls, particularly in urban areas like Tehran.
Negahdari also highlighted the paradoxical “simultaneous phenomenon of shortage and surplus of human resources” across different regions. Some provinces face severe shortages while others have surpluses, a situation that can vary even between cities within the same province or different areas of the same city.
As Iran’s education system faces these multifaceted challenges, the need for comprehensive reforms and increased investment in both human resources and infrastructure becomes increasingly apparent.
The future of Iran’s educational quality and, by extension, its economic and social development, hinges on addressing these critical issues promptly and effectively.