Almost 1,700 students drop out of school in Iran’s Kurdistan province in one academic year

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Almost 1,700 students dropped out of school in Iran’s Kurdistan province in the 2019-2020 academic year – mostly because of poverty and cultural practices, according to a provincial education official.

“A total of 1,685 students have dropped out of school… out of which 485 are grade 6 students and 1,200 are grade 9 students,” Mahdi Namdar, deputy minister of secondary education of Iran’s Kurdistan province told the state-run IRNA agency on Friday.

The main reasons for students leaving school early are economic and cultural, Namdar explained, including early marriage for girls, boys entering the workforce, and a shortage of schools in remote villages.

Some eight percent of grade 9 students – mostly girls – have not registered for grade 10, according to Namdar.

Villages, particularly in border areas, lack schools for higher-grade teaching, Namdar said, and many families do not allow their daughters to stay in boarding schools away from home.

"In order to attract these students, we have also put together a distance education plan, which some families have agreed to and their children are supposed to continue their education in this way,” he said.

In the current academic year, around 300,000 students of all grades are studying in 3,800 urban and rural schools in Kurdistan province, according to the province’s education ministry.

COVID-19 restrictions and reliance on on-line learning has created a new challenge, especially in the mountainous areas where internet connections are unreliable.

"Considering the current conditions of society and the closure of schools and face-to-face education of students, we should all try our best not to exclude any students from education," Abbas Soltani, the Iranian education ministry’s director general of secondary education told IRNA on December 31.

"Very good measures have been taken to cover the students' education and prevent them from dropping out of high school,” Soltani added.

Children who have had to drop out of school to help provide for their families told Rudaw on Saturday of their difficult home and working conditions. 

“I make 20 thousand to 30 thousand tomans [roughly $1] a day. It’s cold and our house is far away,” said Mohsen Rasuli, and 11-year-old child labourer who works from morning to evening. 

Fardin Fiujian, 13, said “my dad has 52 stitches on his back and can’t work.”

The Kurdish areas of Iran are among the poorest in the country.

Around 70,000 kolbars are active in the Kurdish areas of Iran, most of whom carry untaxed goods on their back from the Kurdistan Region into Iran to make a living for their families. Hundreds are killed or wounded every year at the hands of Iranian border guards and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Manual labourers in Sanandaj told Rudaw in October 2020 of low wages and hazardous work conditions as they struggle from job to job. “Our work is seasonal, sometimes we get 25 days of work and then we sit at home unemployed. Our pockets are empty again and we don’t have any back-up,” said labourer Soran Mohammedi.

Iran’s economy, already suffering under decades of economic mismanagement and rampant corruption, has dramatically worsened under American sanctions. According to the Statistical Centre of Iran, inflation increased by 41 percent in 2020.

Around 70 percent of the country’s population of 80 million are in need of state handouts. The situation in Kurdish areas like Mariwan is particularly acute, with unemployment running at around 50 percent.

The economic crisis has led to increased rates of depression and suicide, and have driven the emigration of hundreds of Kurdish youth.