Continuing deficit in the education budget and the concerns of educators

The Iranian Ministry of Education has been struggling with a budget shortage for years, and this situation continues. The livelihood concerns of working and retired educators have repeatedly led to protest movements and gatherings.

The Ministry of Education's budget increased in 2019 compared to the previous year, but this increase is less than half the inflation rate announced by official authorities.

According to available evidence, delays in paying some of the demands of working and retired educators, which were accompanied by much criticism and protest movements in previous years, will continue this year, and the possibility of the situation worsening due to the economic pressures on the government resulting from sanctions is not far-fetched.

The state-run IRNA news agency, on Monday, May 6, in a report titled "Culturalists and Endless Concerns," referring to the union and livelihood demands of cultural workers, wrote: "This request and concern has always been raised by them, that their salaries and benefits are different from other government employees, and the conditions are such that even the issued rulings, which are completely legal, are not given importance."

The Ministry of Education, with 1.7 million working and retired teachers and cultural workers, is a very populous ministry that is responsible for the upkeep and upkeep of 14 million students in various educational courses.

Discrimination between educators and other government employees

One of the long-standing complaints of education workers is discrimination between them and other government employees; for example, severance pay for educators is typically paid with a delay of several months, while other government employees usually receive their bonuses immediately upon retirement.

Apart from the inefficiency and mismanagement of the Islamic Republic's education system administrators, which has been widely reported in both pro- and anti-government media, the Ministry of Education's budget shortfall has been a deep-rooted problem for years.

The Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly once wrote in a report referring to the salaries of educators during the review of the proposed budget for 2016: "Despite the relative increase in salaries and benefits, since employees of the Ministry of Education do not enjoy benefits such as missions, work allowances, and overtime like employees of other ministries, their average salaries and benefits are undoubtedly lower than the average cost of living of an urban family. As a result, the attractiveness of the teaching profession and dissatisfaction of cultural colleagues are among the first results of this discrepancy."

According to IRNA, 98 percent of the Ministry of Education's total budget is spent on personnel costs, leaving the ministry with no budget to improve the quantitative and qualitative levels of the education system, nor money for essential expenses such as repairing and equipping educational units.

Rising costs, shrinking budget

According to this report, the share of education and training employee salaries and benefits has been growing continuously since 2015, increasing from about 89.5 percent to more than 93 percent in 2017.

Since the beginning of the 11th government in 2013, the budget deficit of the Ministry of Education has been increasing with slight fluctuations, reaching from 1.8 trillion tomans to 5 trillion tomans in 2017.

Official and final statistics on the education system's budget deficit last year have not yet been published, but evidence shows that this figure could be much higher than the deficit of the previous year.

In last year's budget law, the Ministry of Education's budget was set at 49 trillion tomans. The state news agency says that Ali Hayar Turkman, the deputy minister for planning and human resources at the Ministry of Education, recently announced that the ministry received nearly 35 trillion tomans last year and used it to pay part of the demands of educators.

According to these figures, the budget deficit of the Ministry of Education last year could be two to three times that of 2017. According to IRNA, in 2018, nearly one trillion tomans from the foreign exchange reserve fund and government salaries were allocated to "pay the demands for exam fees, tuition fees, teachers' salaries, and the purchasing power of educational services," which slightly reduces the budget deficit.

While the Statistical Center of Iran announced the average inflation rate last year at 27 percent, the total budget of the Ministry of Education in 2019 is projected to be slightly more than 56 trillion tomans, which is only about 11 percent more than the previous year.

Undecided projects due to budget deficit

The undecided teacher ranking plan is a clear example of the problem of budget shortages and the resulting pressure on employees of the Iranian education system; the first phase of this plan was implemented in 2015 with an allocation of 1.3 billion tomans, during which the salaries of educators increased by an average of 400,000 tomans per month.

The continuation of the implementation of this plan was halted due to a lack of funding. Recent statements by the Minister of Education, Mohammad Bathaei, who announced during Teacher's Week that he had "requested assistance" in a meeting with the president to continue the implementation of this plan, indicate its uncertainty.

Given the intensification of US sanctions, which have severely reduced the government's foreign exchange earnings, the likelihood of allocating sufficient funding to the Ministry of Education is highly unlikely.

Forecasts of a sharp increase in inflation and a significant decrease in economic growth indicate that Iran's economic crisis will continue this year, and with this outlook, the budget shortage will not only affect the Ministry of Education more, but will also affect other sectors.

Reuters news agency reported on May 29, quoting Jihad Azour, director of the International Monetary Fund's Middle East and Central Asia Department, that inflation in Iran will continue to rise for the second consecutive year and could reach 40 percent or even more.

In its annual report on the "World Economic Outlook" published in early April, the International Monetary Fund predicted that Iran's economic growth would reach minus six percent in 2019.

Increasing protests by educators' unions

Last week, most provinces and cities in Iran witnessed nationwide protest rallies by educators on Teacher's Day. Teachers and educators protesting the call of the "Coordination Council of Iranian Educators' Trade Unions" gathered in front of the General Education Departments of various provinces and cities and demanded that their situation be addressed.

ILNA News Agency reported that the most important demands of the educators are "improving the living standards of working and retired teachers, abolishing privatization and providing free, quality education to all students, implementing equalization of pensioners' rights, payment of education and training demands by the government, and freedom of association."

Based on images and videos posted on social media, other demands of the protesters included efficient and comprehensive insurance, making schools safer, eliminating discrimination in the educational structure, and the release of teachers and union activists who were arrested in previous protests.

According to reports, protest gatherings by educators in some cities have turned violent with the intervention of security and law enforcement officers, and a number of protesters have been arrested.

Source: DW