Despite a directive by the Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei that schools should provide education to all children, including those without legal status, only 10% of Afghan children were able to enroll in schools for the current academic year (began Sept. 23).
“We expected a large number of Afghan children to attend school this year, but sadly they are still facing various obstacles,” rued Fatemeh Ashrafi, executive director of Hami (Association for Protection of Refugee Women and Children) at the second conference on Educational Development and Equality, Mehr News Agency reported.
Ashrafi cited lack of information, unaffordability to pay the tuition fees, inadequate capacity for admissions, failing to register on time, being over 18 years of age, and lacking official birth certificates as the main reasons for many Afghan students not making it on the school rosters.
The Interior Ministry had given a five-day extension to 7-18 year-old Afghan students to get letters of recommendation for admission in Iranian schools and to pay a fee of $60 for enrollment. It is generally believed that this amount is too high for most Afghan families.
A new school for refugee children opened this year in Shourabad, Rey County in south Tehran, by Hami, (literally, supportive) which is a non-government association in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), where 700 students have enrolled.
Although many Afghan children are still deprived of education, currently, 360,000 foreign students are legally registered in schools across the country, including 330,000 Afghans.
