An upward of 18,500 students are deprived of education compared to the previous year
The National Statistics Center of Iran published its statistics on the number students who are either deprived of education or have dropped out of school on January 2, 2024.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, 929,798 students in three educational stages have been deprived of education.
The figure shows more than 18,500 increased compared to the academic year 2021-2022 when the total number of students deprived of education was 911,272.
In the elementary level, 175,114 students did not go to school, including 96,202 boys and 78,912 girls.
In the junior high school level, 98,271 boys and 99,723 girls did not go to school, which makes a total of 197,690. The number of students who did not make it to senior high school level is 556,994, including 295,101 boys and 261,893 girls.
On September 14, 2023, a state-run website, Rouydad24.ir, published a report in which it estimated that the number of students deprived of education is around 7.4 million.
Despite the lack of transparency and accuracy in government statistics, they nevertheless shed light on the dire circumstances faced by children, especially young Iranian girls. In 2018, the adviser to the Ministry of Education and the director-general of women and family affairs disclosed that 19% of the country’s girls were out of school, underlining the pressing issues that continue to affect them.
In 2019, Massoumeh Ebtekar, Head of the Women and Family Affairs Directorate in 2019, estimated that the number of girls missing out on education was three times higher than that of boys. (The state-run ana.press, September 17, 2019).
All available data supports the fact that girls are more likely to drop out of school and remain out of school compared to boys. This trend becomes particularly pronounced at the secondary level, mainly due to forced marriages.
One of the unfortunate consequences of student drop outs and the growing poverty among the Iranian people is the increasing number of young Iranian girls and children forced into child labor.